When Titans Fall
by Irish Luck 19
Summary: In the aftermath of HYDRA's victory, heroes have been slaughtered and countries obliterated. The last remnants no longer fight to take back what was lost—just to survive.
1. Prologue

Natasha didn't feel the shot that killed her.

She saw the blood spray out in front of her, heard her own reflexive gasp, spun to keep from falling. But she didn't feel it.

"Natasha!" Sam had realized she was no longer right on his heels and turned back for her. Clint, slung over Sam's shoulders, stirred enough to lift his head.

They all stared at the hole in her stomach. She had trained for years to tune out pain, but this was different. This was her body trying to pretend it wasn't dead.

But the brutal desert sunlight hid nothing; they all knew what this kind of wound meant. She had five minutes. Ten if she dragged herself into the shade of one of the abandoned buildings, laid still, and waited to die.

As if.

Another bullet hit the ground, inches from her feet. The shot that had killed her was lucky, but they were closing in. She gave them a small, flirtatious smile, blood flecking her lips. "Looks like you boys are going on without me."

Sam hesitated. The same old hero's debate Natasha had seen play out time and again: save the lives he could? Or stay behind, show honor, and die with her?

Honor had died with Steve Rogers. Natasha would be damned if Sam and Clint went the same way. She drew her gun and aimed at Clint's dangling, bleeding legs.

"What the hell?!"

Natasha held the gun steady. "You're ten minutes away. If you don't move now, I give him another bullet in the leg, and you'll have to run to save him. Your options are to go with a bullet in Clint or without. Find the signal. Find Stark."

There was a buzz like an angry bee, and then another bullet slammed into her, this time lodging in the thick muscles on her lower back. Natasha still felt nothing. She twirled on the momentum like a dancer and ran towards the enemy, weaving just enough to keep their half-rate sniper from getting a bead on her. "Go!"

"Nat…"

Something inside of her _hurt_ at Clint's moan, and no numbness or training could stop it. Natasha ran from it instead. A glance over her shoulder told her that Sam had taken her orders and run, so she tossed the gun away—she'd run out of bullets ages ago, but Sam didn't know that.

Sam could face down any pursuers who got close to him, but there were two long range threats that would kill them: the sniper who had killed her and the helicopter that was still a tiny dot in the sky.

Four minutes.

Natasha was out of weapons, so she threw herself between two crumbling buildings, pressed so close together that she could put a hand and foot on each and spider up between them. Something tore where the second bullet had lodged—her right leg gave out, and she slid several feet before catching herself. Two soldiers chose that moment to walk in looking for her.

Natasha let herself drop, falling atop one instead of her usual graceful straddle around the neck. She threw an elbow into his windpipe, breaking the cartilage, seized his knife as he collapsed, and threw it into his companion's eye. It was over before she hit the ground.

Three minutes.

She rolled free, then worked the still-choking man's rifle off him. It wasn't easy—her hands were slippery with blood, and he was clawing at his throat, tangling the strap. Natasha would curse herself for throwing away the knife if she had the breath, but instead she yanked the gun loose, fired three rounds into the soldier's back, grabbed his grenades off of him, and dragged herself to the top of the building.

Two minutes.

SHIELD standard issue rifle, nothing specialty or fancy, but workable. Natasha was no Hawkeye, but she was good enough to take out some two-bit sniper, especially when she could see the sparkle of his scope. Her piece wasn't meant for very long distances, and her eyes were screwing up, her diaphragm hitching, but she made herself breathe as deeply as she still could, judge the wind, the minute tilts and angles of her gun. It took three shots, but she brought him down. Another two killed his spotter.

One minute.

Natasha collapsed, gun underneath her. Her vision was dark around the edges, and she knew that she was forgetting something, but all she could think about was the sound of her pulse throbbing in her ears.

No, not her pulse; helicopter blades. She picked herself up enough to see it coming in, a black blob in the bleached-white sky. HYDRA was still after her team, and Sam and Clint would die minutes after she did unless she could find a way to stop it.

She couldn't shoot it down, not with a rifle like this. And if she stayed on the roof, they'd pick her off before she got close enough to do any damage. Natasha started to climb back down to the alley, and then her fingers gave out halfway down. She somehow managed to land on her one good leg, but her ankle twisted as she did. She lay in the dust in a crumpled, bloody heap—an choreographer would have named her pose _Defeat_. And yet, despite being out of time, despite the fact that she should already be dead, she struggled up again.

Her vision had tunneled to pinpricks, but she kept herself focused, feeling nothing as she patted herself down. She knew she'd had them.

Grenades. In her pocket. She took one in each hand and pulled out the pins with her teeth, the spoons clenched tight. It would work if she could just… if they'd get close before she…

She was on her knees. Lungs and mouth filled with blood. Everything black. She couldn't even feel her hands, still pressed on the grenades to keep them contained. But that old wives' tale about sound being the last to go must be true, because she could still hear. Hear the helicopter getting closer, angling down to find her between the buildings and aim at her.

Natasha drew on resources she had thought were long gone. A split second before she heard their guns go off, she launched herself to her feet and _threw._

A row of bullets ripped through her stomach and chest, and before she could even fall, the explosion sent burning shards of shrapnel through her. Hot metal lanced through one eye in a painless flash of sensation and heat, but the orange of the blast was so bright that her other saw again. A brief view of the helicopter going down, a flash of red and gold soaring above her, then, as she collapsed, a stretch of shining sand with two tiny figures racing across it, one carrying the other. Sam raced towards the space where desert met sky and formed an odd ripple, like a heat wave.

She felt no pain. But for the first time since Rogers had died, since HYDRA had won and the world ended, Natasha felt something else.

Hope.


	2. Jus Ad Bellum

Part 1: Jus ad Bellum

Chapter 1

Desert air scorched Sam's lungs, burning him from the inside out. He forced himself forward, more stagger than jog. Clint's body tried to push him down and the sand slipped out under his feet, grounding him like his wings were broken all over again. He locked his knees to keep moving.

Loss ripped at his insides, every footfall away from Natasha hitting his gut like a punch. The pararescue motto rang in his ears for some reason, pushing him forward to save Clint, pulling him back to Natasha, beating in his mind with every breath. _So that others might live. So that others might live. So that others…_

Ahead of him, the air wavered. Not a heat wave: it was too circular and glinted with silver. Some kind of tech he'd never seen before. Tony Stark. Safety.

He would make it if he sprinted alone, Natasha had bought him that much time. But Clint must have eaten rocks for breakfast, and the sound of Humvees echoed through the scorching desert air behind him. He knew it wouldn't be long until he was in range. There had already been enough people who died to protect him; Sam'd always known his turn would come to pay it forward, and here in the desert, defending an Avenger, seemed like as good a place as—

"Heads up."

Someone heavy and metallic landed two feet away from him. Sam spun, half collapsing; Clint groaned as they hit the ground, and Sam felt a fresh wave of warm stickiness on his shoulder. From his knees, he twisted up to look at the suit. Sunlight glinted from the red and gold, turned it blinding—a statue of a warrior god. Iron Man faced the oncoming HYDRA soldiers. "Charge straight into the shimmer. I've got this."

His voice was tinny and higher than Sam expected, but he didn't have time to think about it; he somehow picked himself up and staggered on. Behind him, there was the sound of something revving up, and then a blast.

He reached the heatwave just as gunfire sounded out. Too tired, too desperate to hesitate, he all but fell in.

There was a cool ripple across his body, as if he had stepped through a bubble, suspended and weightless, his own body unreal. And then it was gone, and he was blind and gasping, Clint's weight crushing again. The gunfire was muffled, the air cold and dim, so dark he thought for a second he might have gone blind. He was too exhausted to care. Clint slid from his back, and it took everything he had to grab him by the shoulders and slow him as he hit the ground.

"Oh no!" A thin silhouette with a woman's British accent separated itself from the darkness and pushed him to the side. Sam blinked as she knelt over Clint and started feeling his chest. The light was so dim after the desert sun that he couldn't see more than her outline. A hand grabbed his shoulder as he tried to focus, and he turned, fists up, to find a man with curly black hair right in his face.

"Easy there," he said. "We're friends. Natasha? Is she with you?"

Riley dropping out of the sky. Cap's body on national news. Nat, gun drawn, a ragged hole in her stomach and a smile on her face.

"No," Sam managed, shaking his head. "She didn't make it."

The hand disappeared from his shoulder, and Sam's vision must be adapting because he saw the man's face crumple. He pulled a radio from his belt. "Rescue, we've got them. Get back in here, we need to go." He turned to Sam. "Can you drag Barton farther in?"

That was when Sam realized the man had his other hand extended behind him, tethering him to the strange, shimmering barrier Sam had crossed. He could still see through it back into the desert, to the pile of now-smoking Humvees, but the whole thing was silvery and dim, as if he saw it through a watery glass. The man had his fingertips pressed to the division between them, as if against a window pane.

Sam forced himself back to his feet and managed to stumble behind Clint's shoulders, tugging him back a few feet from the entrance. The British woman kept right on working as they moved, one hand on Hawkeye's bleeding leg, the other pulling gauze from a messenger bag slung over her shoulder to staunch the bleeding.

"Are you injured?" the man asked Sam as he staggered.

"No. Just—"

There was a blast behind them, and he looked back at the strange portal. Iron Man was hurtling through the barrier and landed in a crouch where Clint had been lying a few seconds ago. The armor folded back from his face, and that was when Sam realized it wasn't Tony Stark—or even a 'him.' A redhead woman with freckles glanced at him, then turned to the other man. "Alright, Bruce, let's go."

He nodded and turned away from them to kneel next to the barrier, pressing both palms against it. Sam saw him take a deep breath, his head bowed, and then the surface rippled and changed to pure silver, the desert gone.

"What'd you do?" Sam asked him. Bruce didn't answer.

"Leave him," Iron Man—Iron Woman?—said. "Let's get Clint to the med bay. Jemma, can I move him?"

"Yes, but let me keep holding the dressing, and take him straight to the scanners," the British woman, Jemma, said. She half turned towards Sam. "When was he shot?"

"Last night. He was ok until this morning. Natasha—" Sam's voice broke. Iron Woman had stooped and gently picked up Clint, moving the injured leg as little as possible. He trotted to keep up with her and Jemma. "Natasha and I patched him up last night, but it tore open when we were running. I think it's just—" _keep it together, man,_ "—it's a combination of heat exhaustion and dehydration as much as blood loss."

"Probably right. His blood pressure's not as low as I expected when I saw him, and he's moderately responsive. We'll need to get some fluids and blood into him as soon as possible, but if that's all that's the matter with him, then I think he'll be alright."

Now that Sam's eyes had adjusted to the dimness, he could see that they were in a corridor made of smooth, tan stone interspersed with pillars and inlaid bronze artwork. Doors and small passages branched off on either side, but this seemed to be the main hallway. Whatever this place was, it clearly wasn't the Arabian Desert. Looked more like something from a Norse mythology book.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"We call it the Pocket," Iron Woman said. "It's a kind of limbo, I guess. I'll explain once we've got Clint stable. In here."

She led the way down a flight of stone steps and into a chamber filled with hospital equipment that seemed like a cross between Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Jemma ran ahead to a table and light arced around it as Iron Woman set down her burden.

"I'm a trained medic," Sam said. "I can help."

"You look like you're about to pass out. Pepper, can you get him some water and make sure he sits down? I have to focus on Agent Barton."

"Got it." Iron Woman must have sensed that Sam wasn't going to let Clint out of his sight, because she led him to a corner of the room and had him sit on a gurney. Now that Sam had time to study her, he thought she looked a little familiar.

"My name's Pepper Potts," she said, reading his look.

"Sam Wilson. Weren't you Stark's CEO? And fiancee?"

"Just CEO. We never quite reached the second part."

"And Tony Stark? He make it too?"

Sam watched the too-steady expression on her face and felt his own heart sink. Looked like Tony Stark wasn't going to drop out of the sky and save them after all.

"I'm sorry," he said. "When we picked up your signal, we'd hoped the propaganda had lied. World lost a great man."

"The world lost a lot of great men. I lost the love of my life." She stood up. "Let me get you that water."

When Pepper came back, the glass tiny and delicate in her armored hands, her face was set, and Sam knew better than to bring up the subject again. He focused on the water, on how just moving it up to his lips seemed like too much to handle. Tried not to think of Nat and how much she had hoped Tony Stark had made it. She'd banked on it, really—if Stark had survived, there was sure to be a high tech, eleventh-hour chance to beat HYDRA. It had been all that kept her and Clint going at the end, to the point that Sam had started to buy into it too. And now they found out Stark was dead and Natasha's work and sacrifice had been for nothing.

"Are you injured?" Pepper asked after a minute. Sam shook his head.

"Had a concussion a couple days ago, but it's clearing. Just your usual scrapes and bumps, otherwise."

She nodded. Sam watched Jemma moving around Clint. Her movements were calmer, slower than they'd been when he first came in.

"Is this all that's left of the resistance? You three?" he asked quietly. Pepper shook her head.

"I've got a team of four men in Chicago right now, and one other person in her own room. And you met Bruce, of course."

"'Bruce?' Wait, that was Bruce Banner? As in the big green guy?" He'd imagined the man who made Nat smile like she had would have been… different somehow. More like Clint, perhaps, or maybe Cap. Also—

"Why aren't you using _him_ to fight HYDRA? If there was _ever_ a group for the Hulk to smash—"

"We tried. HYDRA… HYDRA found a way to contain him." Pepper paused and took a deep breath. Sam frowned at her.

"They can control the Hulk?"

"Direct him, yes. If they're prepared. And even if they're not, even if we manage to beat them in the field with him, they nuke a city in retaliation."

Sam stared, not quite able to believe it. He and Natasha had been out of the loop for the past month or so, but he couldn't quite believe even HYDRA would go so far as to…

"They did it to LA," Pepper said, a haunted look in her eye. "Two million casualties. He hasn't left the Pocket since. Wanted to when he realized you three were out there—but I didn't let him. I couldn't."

Sam nodded and looked at the expression on Pepper's face. He'd seen it on Cap's too—the self-doubt, wondering if something should have been done differently. "Nat was shot ten minutes before you got there. Bringing out the Hulk wouldn't have saved her. You made the right call."

She gave him a grateful look. "You should tell Bruce that when he's not piloting. He already blames himself for too much, and adding on Natasha's death… I don't know how he's going to handle it."

There weren't any windows in wherever they were, so Sam didn't know how much time passed. Long enough for him to doze propped up on his hand. Long enough for Pepper to leave and come back dressed in jeans and an oversized Pink Floyd t-shirt. They sat in silence until Clint groaned and they both turned to look. Jemma stopped fussing and leaned over him, speaking quietly. Sam walked over.

"Agent Barton? Agent Barton, can you hear me?"

He groaned again, then lolled his head over to look at her. "Been awhile since someone called me that."

"I beg your pardon. It's an old habit. My name is—"

"Agent Simmons."

"You know who I am?" Jemma's thin, haggard face lit up with delight. For a second, Sam thought he saw who she must have been before HYDRA had taken over—a sweet scientist, enthralled by the adventure and idealism of what she did.

"You're the SHIELD scientist that designed the implants to fix my hearing after Budapest."

"Oh. Yes, I did." Jemma's cheeks were now rather pink, and the openness of her smile made her look years younger. "I never imagined you knew who that was, though. Are they still working?"

"Are they what?"

She raised her voice. "Are your hearing implants still—"

Sam smacked Clint's arm. "Don't pay attention to him, Agent Simmons, he's messing with you. He's fine."

"Sam." Instantly Clint was all business. "What happened? I remember seeing Natasha get hit…"

Before Sam could come up with an answer, Pepper stepped forward. Her voice was formal. "You both should know. I found Natasha's body before Bruce called me back. There were no life signs. I burned it from the air so that she wouldn't have her corpse paraded around like Tony's and Steve's were."

Clint and Pepper stared at each other for a long time. Finally, Clint nodded and laid his head back on the table. "Thank you. She would have preferred that."

"She died a hero, you know," Sam said. "I don't know how much you remember, but she saved both of us. I don't think she would have wanted it any other way."

Clint nodded again, but his eyes were closed. After a minute, he shook his head.

"Who else made it?"

Pepper and Jemma traded a loaded glance.

"Well, Dr. Banner is here. I don't know if you remember seeing him when you arrived, but he's doing well," Jemma said in a too-bright voice. "There's also an Asgardian and another couple of SHIELD—"

She stopped when a hand landed on her shoulder.

"We need to tell him the truth," Pepper said. "Not try to protect him."

"Agent Romanoff just _died._ He can wait—"

"We don't have the luxury of waiting on bad news, Agent Simmons. And I won't hold back the truth." Pepper's voice was gentle, but there was a note of command in it. Sam almost saluted, never mind that he was in civvies and inside. "Clint. We've got someone else here, but they're in bad condition."

Dr. Simmons bit her lip. "At least let me trade with Bruce so that he can be here. He's Agent Barton's friend, and—"

"And you and I are terrible at piloting the Pocket. He needs to stay where he is."

Clint had sat up and was looking between them with a confused but set expression.

"Nat and I said our good-byes a long time ago," he said. "And I've gotten used to mourning friends. Whatever you both are talking about, just get on with it. I can handle anything by now."

Jemma darted off for the wheelchair and Pepper stared at the ground. Sam gave him a helpless shrug, despite his suspicion that, no, this might well be something Clint couldn't handle.

Pepper and Jemma helped Clint into the chair, but he swatted their hands away when Pepper tried to steer and wheeled himself instead. He made it about three seconds before his face went white, and he let Sam take over. Jemma trotted along at their side, pushing a pole with his IV bags. Sam wondered for a second how they'd get the chair up the…

"Weren't there stairs here?" he asked. "I swear, there were stairs here."

"It's the Pocket," Jemma said as they went back into the corridor they had come from. "Reality is fluid in this place. Usually we can work that in our favor, but it did eat my hairbrush two days ago. You get used to it after a few days."

"Or you don't," Pepper said as she led them down a side passage. "I'm still not."

"I lost both of you at 'It's the Pocket.'"

Pepper smiled. "The Pocket's a sort of limbo, or maybe dream world. I still don't quite know how it works. You can ask Bruce or Jemma about it if you want to get confused."

Sam almost tried asking more questions, but the set expressions on Pepper and Jemma's faces said that this was not a good idea. He had as much idea what was going on as Clint, but that didn't stop a solid pit of dread from welling up in him. What could be so bad that they thought Clint might take it worse than Natasha's death?

Jemma turned as they reached a door carved with twisting, Celtic knots. "At least let me go in first and make sure that she's calm."

Pepper nodded, and Jemma darted inside before Sam could get a glimpse of who or what was in there. Clint still looked confused, but Jemma was back and opening the door before he could ask any more questions.

It was a bedroom. Small, with country-style quilts and wooden furniture that seemed out of place in the middle of the castle-like architecture. At the end of the bed sat a woman who didn't look up as they came in. Her head was down, and loose, dark hair covered her face, but Clint was out of his chair in a second.

 _"Laura."_ Heedless of his torn leg, he tottered to the bed and circled his arms around her.

She gasped and pulled away. Sam caught a glimpse of her face—wide, darting eyes, a haunted expression—and then she ducked her head again and went still. Or almost still. Sam could see her shaking.

"Laura?" Clint moved one hand, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Honey, what's wrong?"

She shrank back. "No, p-please, _please_ don't. Just d-don't… please, I… it hurts so bad, and I can't… _it hurts…_ " her voice trailed off into a whispered stream that Sam couldn't make out.

"Don't what? I'm not gonna hurt you. You know I'd never… Laura? Come on, it's me. Just talk to me. What's wrong?" He kept speaking, trying to reassure her, holding her close, but she didn't react.

"Clint," Sam said, hating himself for it. But, damn it, she was shaking, and he'd seen that posture in abused animals. "I think you're scaring her."

He let go slowly. The second his arms were gone, Laura pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock back and forth. The whispered words continued.

Clint reached for her face, then pulled back at the last second, his hands hovering in the air. "Laura?" She didn't answer, and he turned to them instead with desperate eyes. "What's wrong with her?"

Pepper cleared her throat. "Your family wasn't in any SHIELD files. By the time we found out about her and tracked down where she'd gone to ground, HYDRA had come and gone. I led the rescue mission myself—Bruce even brought out the Hulk to save her—but she was like you see now when we got there."

"I've been trying to help her," Jemma whispered. "But none of the antipsychotics or therapies have made a difference. We'd hoped that maybe having you back would trigger something, but clearly it hasn't."

Clint stared at his wife, and then his eyes found Pepper's.

"Our kids. Cooper and Lila. Do you—"

" _NO!"_ Laura shrieked. Clint tried to catch her but was a second too slow—she threw herself off the bed and skidded across the floor, hands up like she was expecting a blow. "No! _No!_ I won't, I won't say where they are! I won't tell you, I _won't!"_

The sound that came from Clint's mouth was something Sam never wanted to hear again. Laura cowered at it and huddled in a ball, sobbing. Clint got up, but his leg buckled under him, and Sam had to catch him.

"You may want to give her space. She calms a little faster that way." Jemma grabbed a quilt from the foot of the bed and draped it over her. It helped a little; Laura's sobs quieted at least, and her hands clutched it instead of frantically trying to fend off an attacker.

"We think she hid your kids before HYDRA found her," Pepper said quietly. "They tried to find out where, but… she broke before she told. Now she doesn't know she's safe and still refuses to say. They're safe, but we have no idea where."

"We thought perhaps you might know, Agent Barton."

"No, I…" Sam tried to guide Clint back to his chair, but the guy pulled towards his wife like a magnet, and Sam had to let him sit on the floor, a few feet away from her. He reached for her, then pulled back at the last second and grabbed his hair instead, no doubt remembering what had just happened when he tried to touch her.

"I told her not to tell me," Clint said. "Ever since Loki… I made her come up with a plan and not tell me what it was in case I was compromised again. I don't know where my own children are."

They all watched Laura, but she had gone so still that Sam thought she might have fallen asleep. After a few minutes, he motioned to Pepper and Jemma, and the two of them cleared the room. Jemma was wiping her eyes as she left.

Now more than ever, Sam wished it had been him who had been shot and not Natasha. If there was anyone who could have gotten Clint through this, it was her. Instead, he'd had both of his supports knocked out from under him within an hour.

"You know, I got trained as a grief counselor. But I've got no idea how to help someone deal with this."

Clint didn't answer. His misery was palpable. There wasn't much Sam could say, so he took a seat in the rocking chair in one corner and watched.

They had been hanging on for so long. Convinced that if they could just make it to Stark, they'd be safe. The three of them had planned it last night, while Sam treated Clint's bullet wound—how Stark would have a brilliant strategy to bring HYDRA down, the remaining Avengers would assemble for one last, grand battle, and the world would heal. So simple, so easy. One, quick fix.

Natasha was dead. So was Stark. The Avengers were scattered, the remnants fighting to survive. And as he watched Clint stretch out beside his wife, Sam let himself think for the first time that maybe none of it mattered anyways.

Even if they won, there were some things that would never heal.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

Laura fell asleep first, and then Clint a half hour later. Sam watched him, half dozing himself, and saw the way Clint's hand drifted towards his wife but stopped just shy of the blanket. They weren't even touching, but something about the moment was too intimate for him to watch. He quietly stood, stretched, and walked out.

Pepper was in the hall outside, back in her Iron Man armor and clearly waiting for him. She gave him a businesslike smile as he closed the door. "I was about to come get you if it took much longer. We need your help."

"I'm all yours," Sam said, and was surprised by how much he meant it. He'd thought he had nothing left in the tank, but after seeing what HYDRA had done to Laura and Clint, action sounded like the best thing in the world right now.

"I've got the rest of the team coming back in half an hour," Pepper said, leading him down the hall as she spoke. "And we have no idea what shape they're going to be in. I need back up in case things have gotten hot."

"Don't know how much help I'll be without my wings."

"I can't get you those, but I can get… this." Pepper pulled open a door and Sam found himself staring at a bathroom with a deep marble tub filled with steaming water.

"Uh… thanks?"

She shook her head. "Damn it, the bathroom keeps moving. Bruce is too distracted. He's not managing the Pocket well right now. I can't say that I blame him after Natasha." She pulled the door closed, waited a few seconds, and then opened it again. This time, the tub was replaced with a large room of gun racks, cases of ammo, and a couple grenade launchers tucked in a corner. Sam stared.

"Arm up," Pepper told him.

"Right. Right." Sam stepped into the room. Whatever magical shit was going on, the weapons appeared real. He found a couple Steyr TMPs, like he'd carried on that last, fateful mission with Cap, and they fit into his hands with a comforting solidity. He found ammo for it on the shelf beneath. "What the hell is this place?"

"You can ask Dr. Banner for the science details later, if you want—I think he knows it the best of anyone who's left. Jemma might be able to give you some pointers, too, although she's less comprehensible."

"But they aren't here, and I need to know the basics if I'm going to have your back in this… Pocket." Sam saw sets of body armor lined up against the wall in different sizes. _Now we're talking_. "Just give me the layman's terms; I'm not a super-scientist."

"Neither am I. Jane and Bruce made the Pocket, and I mostly just went along for the ride. The architecture's modeled after Jane's time in Asgard, I think." Pepper flexed the hand of her armor; little electric sounds came from it as it expanded and retracted.

"But what is it?"

"Imagine… Alright, this is how Bruce explained it to me. Imagine that our reality isn't the only one out there. That there are alternate universes, based on different decisions people have made."

"Like the multiverse theory you hear about in sci-fi movies?"

"Exactly. There's a world where you were never born, another where we lost World War II, another where…"

"HYDRA never took over?"

Pepper gave a humorless laugh. "Wish we could find that one. But sure. The Pocket sort of… floats in the space between those possibilities. Reality's in limbo here because we're pulling from materials in a lot of different universes. And HYDRA can't get us because, while we're in here, we don't exist, not in their world."

Sam frowned. "But when we go to pick up your guys, we rejoin our universe?"

"And that means that anyone can get into the Pocket. Our job is to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Got it." Well no, not really. But he'd deal with that later. For now, they had to defend their base and pick up some men. Good enough for him. "This is good armor. Lighter than I'm used to."

"SHIELD prototype that we managed to get ahold of before HYDRA. Some kind of experimental polymer." She looked Sam up and down as he slipped a couple knives onto his belt and smiled. "Ready?"

"Let's do it."

Dr. Banner was right where they'd left him, sitting crosslegged with his hands pressed against one corner of the silver barrier. He almost looked asleep, but as soon as Sam and Pepper stepped into the large, atrium-like room, he spoke:

"Is it time?"

"Not yet." Pepper pulled a digital watch display up on the suit. "Landing in ten minutes. You lost the armory again for a few seconds."

"I know."

"I'll change your shift as soon as I can. In the meantime, Sam, I need you to protect Dr. Banner. He has to touch the barrier to pilot, but that leaves him exposed. I'll take care of anyone who tries to get in, you just keep him safe."

Sam nodded and headed to stand over Dr. Banner's corner, trying not to think about the fact that he was in charge of protecting the _Hulk._ Looking across to the other wall, Sam could see Jemma tucked into an alcove where she'd be out of the line of fire. She had an array of medical equipment spread out before her, but was also in body armor and had a gun strapped to her leg. She glanced up at them, then returned to adjusting an old time radio with a neurotic focus.

"Where are we landing?" Sam asked, unsure if 'landing' was even the right word to use for it.

"Chicago."

"How many men are we extracting?"

"Four. Possibly a fifth, a woman, with them, but I hope not. It would mean her cover was blown."

"We've got a mole in HYDRA?"

"Hunter, one of my men, has a mole in HYDRA. He won't tell us anything about her." Going by the tone in Pepper's voice, the secrecy was not appreciated. "Last time we landed, he picked up her distress signal through whatever method they communicate with and insisted on checking it out. The other three went to resupply while we were there."

They stood in silence until Pepper checked the time again and flipped the face plate of her mask down.

"Alright, Bruce," she said, her voice tinny and high from the suit. "Take us down."

Sam drew his guns and braced himself in case the ground under them moved, but instead Bruce tensed up, the silver shimmered and resolved into an empty alleyway dusted with snow. Not quite empty. A man in a dark hoodie and jeans stood leaning against the wall, flipping a small flashdrive between his fingers, as if he was thinking. There was a cigarette in his other hand, like he'd stepped outside for a smoke break, but nothing wafted up from the end.

He glanced their way, tucked the flashdrive into his pocket, and ambled toward the 'mirage' Sam knew the Pocket looked like from the outside. A casual tug of his sweatshirt showed a face with short brown hair and beard, and a wry smile. Pepper, in the middle of the room, relaxed just a little.

"Hunter. He's a former SHIELD agent with us."

"The one with a spy in HYDRA?"

"That's the one."

Hunter stepped into the Pocket, and immediately his demeanor changed. He became sharp, alive, stood up straight instead of slouching. He took the opposite corner from Sam, guarding Jemma and giving himself a bit of cover behind a marble pillar.

"Were you followed?" Pepper asked.

"No, I got away clean." His English accent was different from Jemma's—lighter and less formal. The kind that would swear in colorful British slang rather than correct your grammar. "But the others were supposed to be back before I was. Something's gone wrong."

"Your source?"

"Cover's intact."

Minutes ticked by.

Sam knew not to relax. Being distracted in moments like these ended with somebody dead. If anything, he felt himself winding up more and more tightly, and he could see Hunter, Bruce, and Jemma doing the same. Pepper was stock still in the suit.

"Incoming," a voice crackled over the radio. "Active pursuit."

Sam barely had time to tense. Three figures skidded around the corner, two of them running full tilt for the Pocket while the last one turned to guard their retreat, gun drawn as he backed down the street. But pursuit didn't come from behind.

A dark shape leaped from the roof above them, black and silent as a shadow, and their man on the ground barely saw him in time. He rolled to the side, came up with his gun at the ready, and opened fire. The shadow lifted his arm just in time and the bullets ricocheted off a silver left arm.

Sam raised his own guns, but he couldn't get a clear shot. Their man and the Winter Soldier were trading blows now, huge punches that would knock a normal man flat, and the runners were almost to the Pocket, blocking his sights.

Pepper launched herself over their heads.

"Heimdall, _move!"_ Her voice was a boom of machinery, even dimmed by the Pocket's surface, and Heimdall threw himself down without hesitating. Pepper launched some kind of missile at the Winter Soldier, who pulled a round shield from his back and batted it away—the street behind them went up in a fireball. He launched his shield at Pepper, who pivoted in midair, then dove to scoop up Heimdall, leaving her back exposed.

Sam stepped out from the Pocket, firing steadily at the Soldier to draw his focus, but he deflected with his arm. Pepper rocketed past him, Heimdall in tow, but Sam couldn't tear himself away. The shield in the no-man's-land between them drew him, the red and white circles, the star in the center. The last relic of Steve Rogers.

A red rage filled him, even as his hands stayed steady, gunfire pinning the Soldier down so that he could scoop up the shield. Down to one gun now, he kept advancing, Cap's shield ready to deflect as the Soldier drew his own weapon. He would kill Barnes. Avenge Rogers.

Mechanical hands seized him, lifted him up, and Sam tried to struggle, but before he could free himself, he was dropped back inside the Pocket, and Bruce slapped his hands on the barrier. Sam had a last glimpse of the Soldier before the wall went silver again.

"I had him," Sam panted. "Why did you—I had him!"

"HYDRA was thirty seconds away!" Pepper snapped. "You really think you were _winning_? He was stalling you! Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were right behind him, and HYDRA's air ships were going to be in range within another two minutes. We would all be dead if we had stayed and fought—you going cowboy could have killed us."

Sam felt himself shaking as the berserker anger slowly left him. He didn't know why it had come over him—tactically, he knew Pepper was right. Trusting the others and working as a unit was what would keep them alive. But as he gripped Cap's shield, ran his hands over the vibranium, he couldn't bring himself to regret the decision. The Soldier had killed Steve Rogers; Sam couldn't let him keep the shield, too.

Pepper ignored him, turning to the others. "Anyone injured?"

The team all shook their heads. Pepper turned to an Asian man dressed all in black. "Wong, take over piloting."

Wong nodded and raised his hands to the barrier. Bruce stayed where he was for a few more seconds and then stepped away. It was as if he had finally given himself permission to feel pain again—his shoulders sagged, and he took a few seconds to get his feet under him.

"Who is this man?" Heimdall asked, looking at Sam. He had a deep, rumbling voice, and unsettling orange eyes that seemed to shine.

"This is Sam Wilson," Pepper said. "He was a friend of Steve's, and traveling with Romanoff and Barton."

"Clint Barton and Natasha Roman—"

Pepper held up an armored hand, and Hunter closed his mouth. She met Sam's eyes. "I know you have questions. All of us do. But right now I need to review what went south with Heimdall. Go down with the others to the kitchens, and we'll debrief—and answer your questions—as soon as I'm through."

After all the Asgardian architecture, Sam had expected the kitchens to look like something straight out of Harry Potter. And, yes, the stone fireplace was large enough to fit the Hulk inside if he crouched, but the effect was offset by a microwave, dishwasher, and coffee pot, not to mention the giant refrigerator taking up most of the hearth.

Jemma and the last of the three resistance members—"Antoine Triplett, but everyone calls me Trip"—seemed to be glued together by the hands. No sooner did they make it to the kitchen then Trip looked around dramatically and leaned in to stage-whisper to her, "I've got something for you."

"Oh really?"

"Mmhmm." He opened one of the pockets of his cargo pants, ignoring the rip that looked suspiciously like a bullet hole, and pulled out a bundle of green sticks. Trip looked confused, but Jemma's smile didn't even falter.

"They're lovely."

"They were _supposed_ to be flowers." He gave a suspicious look at the bullet hole, which had just grazed the top of the pocket. "I guess the Soldier managed to blow their heads off."

Jemma threw her arms around him so hard that he took a step backward. "Just as long as he didn't blow _your_ head off."

"You sure about that?"

She nodded against his chest, and Sam saw Trip grin as he pulled something else out of his backpack. "Good to hear. 'Cause it means I can keep this sweet hairbrush for my—"

"Give me that!" Jemma laughed and made a leap for the hairbrush as Trip held it above their heads.

"It's nauseating," a voice muttered close to Sam's ear. He turned and found Hunter rolling his eyes. "The world ends and those two somehow find each other, like the whole thing was a set up for their own personal rom-com. Trip! Did you bring any beer?"

Jemma took advantage of the distraction and snatched her brush. She whooped in triumph, and then blushed a brilliant pink as she saw them all watching her. Trip looped one arm around her waist and grinned.

"It's in Heimdall's pack, still in the atrium."

"Guess today wasn't such a bloody waste, then," Hunter muttered and left to get it. Sam looked over at Dr. Banner, who had taken a seat at the huge trestle table and was watching Trip and Jemma with a pained expression. Sam carefully set Cap's shield on the table, then slid onto the same bench and nudged his shoulder.

"Hey. You surviving?"

Banner gave him a tired half-smile. "I'm pretty hard to kill."

Sam guessed he should have phrased that better. Before he could correct himself, Banner answered the real question. "I went for three months thinking Nat was dead. I'd already dealt with losing her. I just wish that I'd told her. She never knew that I… that we… I'd never told her how I…"

"She knew," Sam said quietly.

Hunter came back in at that moment carrying a six pack—"Really, Trip? You said _beer_ not this Budweiser shite"—and offered bottles around. He set his feet on the table, far enough away not to be near the shield, and looked at Sam.

"So. Black Widow. Hawkeye. You get a codename, too?"

"Falcon." Hunter opened his mouth, looking interested, and he saw Trip and Jemma leave off their teasing to listen. Sam decided to head the questioning off before it started. Pepper would make him relive everything in a few minutes; he had no interest in doing it more than he had to. "Were you all SHIELD agents?"

"Yes," Trip and Jemma chorused at the same time as Hunter said "Hell no."

"Hunter likes to pretend he wasn't," Jemma said.

"Because I bloody _wasn't_." He shook his head at Sam and said "Mercenary, mate. I'm a mercenary."

Trip laughed. "If HYDRA counted you as one of us, I'm pretty sure that makes you one of us."

"You _would_ side with Jemma, wouldn't you?"

"Every time."

Hunter pretended to gag, but went on. "SHIELD went down when HYDRA rose, and most of the agents turned or died. Until you and Barton and Romanoff came, we thought we were all that was left."

Sam saw Bruce flinch and knew he had to say it. "Barton's the only one who made it. Romanoff got shot before the Pocket arrived."

"Oh." Hunter gave Bruce a sidelong look, and his flippant mood disappeared. "Well, at least we've got the Amazing Hawkeye. Should be useful in a tight spot. Where is the famous Avenger?"

"With his wife," Jemma said before Sam had to. Hunter's face fell even further.

"Poor bastard."

The good-natured mischief had disappeared from Trip's eyes as well. He took a seat on the other side of Banner, nudging shoulders with the doctor, but looked at Sam.

"What happened?"

Sam couldn't quite figure out what to say. Now that the adrenaline from the fight was fading, the enormity of it all crashed in on him again. Natasha was dead, Clint hurt in more ways than one. He was in some surreal alternate reality. The resistance operation was down to the B-list heroes.

He was spared trying to come up with an answer when Pepper swept in, back in her too-large classic rock t-shirt. There was a weary sag to her shoulders, but the way everyone quieted for her said that she was still well in control. Heimdall was by her side, solid and huge. His eyes swept the room, took in everything at once. Sam wondered if he and Wong had worked for SHIELD as well.

"Glad to see everyone's met each other," Pepper said. "Hunter, no more than two beers this time, ok? I don't want a repeat of the Basketball Incident."

Trip snorted into his bottle while Hunter made a face. "Yes, boss."

Pepper took a spot at the head of the table, and Jemma and Heimdall sat down as well. She looked around at each of them before her eyes settled on Sam. "I know we're all exhausted. But Sam, we need to know how this happened. I'd rather you tell it to the whole group so you don't have to repeat yourself."

"I… don't quite know where to start with that."

"The beginning is usually a good place," Bruce said. Pepper nodded.

"Start with the day it happened. You were there, right? On the day HYDRA took over, you were in DC with Steve and Natasha."

Sam saw it flash in front of his mind's eye again. The helicarriers. Falling from the sky. The Winter Soldier.

"Yeah. Yeah, I was."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** So, um, this started as a dark little oneshot I wrote for a Winter Soldier AU. Of course, I should have known that I'm physically incapable of only writing a _short_ story; I had to explore a post-HYDRA universe and see where it led. Enter this semi-apocalyptic story, where the B-list heroes take the stage and the Marvel promise that good will always win is no longer so bankable. I promise lots of twists and turns, thrilling heroics in dark places, and the occasional dashes of romance and humor. Hope those of you reading it enjoy!


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"I'm grounded. The suit's down." Sam stared up at the helicarrier where Cap was still fighting. Riley, his dead wingman, flashed through his head. Just like then, there was nothing he could do except watch. "Sorry, Cap."

"Don't worry, I got it." Rogers said. And the thing was, when Captain America said it like that, Sam believed he _did,_ odds be damned.

He stripped off what was left of his harness and flight gear, trying to catch his breath. Barnes had kicked him right in the chest, and between that and the thin air atop the roof of the Triskelion—

"Falcon?" Maria's voice this time.

"Yeah?"

"Rumlow's heading for the Council."

Son of a bitch. Sam had lost both his guns in the crash landing, and he knew the STRIKE team leader's reputation. "I'm on it."

The Triskelion's roof had a service door with a little keypad on the side to get through. Sam stared at it for about three seconds, wondering if he could kick it down, before it buzzed. Maria thought of everything.

Fury had made them memorize the Triskelion's building plans last night. If Rumlow was taking the stairs—and Maria had shut down all the elevators, so it was a safe bet—he'd need to switch stairwells on the forty-first floor to reach the Council. Sam had to get down there first and ambush him. He raced down the stairs, past the floor with the Security Council, past a few last, terrified workers, throwing himself around the corners and counting every stairwell.

The forty-first floor was deserted, an open office space without anything to hide behind or turn into a weapon. Sam headed for the door Rumlow would come through when he heard Maria again.

"Captain, status."

There was a pause.

"Captain, monitors register a hit, and your blood pressure is dropping. Please give your status."

"Hill?" Fury barked over the noise of the chopper.

"Cap—Steve! Steve, come in. I'm losing your—"

Rumlow forgotten, Sam headed to the window, staring out at the nearest helicarrier. Something deep inside him felt like it had gone missing, the same way it had that horrible night in Afghanistan when Riley got shot. He didn't need Maria to say the next words to know the truth.

"I'm sorry, sir. Steve Rogers was injured and his vital signs bottomed out." She cleared her throat. "We've lost him. Three minutes left."

"Turn the bird around, I'm going in," Fury said. "If the chip's still there, I'll—"

Gunfire blared in Sam's earpiece and he heard Maria scream, just once, before static blared on her end.

"Hill? Hill do you copy? Hill!"

A boot collided with Sam's back. He crashed to the ground and twisted just enough to see Rumlow standing above him with a gun. There was something manic about his smile, something vital and alive and _wrong_. Sam pushed himself to his feet only to fall back with a blow to his head. He grabbed for Rumlow's knees, got kicked in the chest right where Barnes had done it, and next thing he knew he was down, gasping for air, a boot planted on his stomach, Rumlow's gun pointed at his face. In his ear, Fury demanded to know what was happening, and then something exploded on Fury's end, followed by static.

"Heard about your pal Rogers," Rumlow said. He glanced out the window and, in the corner of Sam's vision, he saw a helicopter careen towards the ground in a fireball. Nick Fury. "And Fury too it looks like. Let's make it a full set."

Gunfire blasted.

It took Sam a moment to realize he hadn't been hit, just sprayed with blood. In fact, it only sank in when Rumlow fell to the side, barely missing him.

A blonde woman stood over them, gun in one hand pointed at Rumlow's still-twitching body. She helped Sam up with the other.

"Is it true? Captain Rogers is dead?"

"Yeah," Sam panted. It hadn't sunk in yet—Steve Rogers, gone. For now, the adrenaline was too high, and all there was was the mission. Stop HYDRA. And they only had about two minutes to do it, with Fury and Hill down. "We need to get to the fiftieth floor. It's where the Security Council and Romanoff are."

The woman bent, picked up Rumlow's gun and passed it to Sam. "Follow me."

The door was secured and Maria wasn't there to help them this time, but the SHIELD agent with him pressed her hand on the scanner. It clicked open and they raced through, guns at the ready.

Dead guards and men in suits lay scattered on the floor. One, an older man with glasses and an expensive gray suit, was twitching. Pierce. Natasha was still standing, so intent on the computer she was working at that she didn't even notice them come in.

Before Sam could do anything, his companion raised her gun and opened fire on Pierce. He jerked as the bullets hit, then went still.

Nat looked up at the noise, and Sam lowered his gun. His watch beeped, reminding them that they had less than thirty seconds unless Natasha had managed to pull off a miracle. She must have. She was an Avenger. "What's the plan?"

Her eyes moved from him to the blonde at his side. For the first time since Sam had met her, the cool composure melted from her gaze—she looked stricken. "Sharon. I'm so sorry."

"What—?"

There was a sound of breaking glass, something whizzed by his ear, and the woman, Sharon, fell. Sam caught her on instinct.

She was dead.

They were out of time. HYDRA's helicarriers had fired, and Sharon was one of the targets. The bullet had gone right through her forehead. Shocked, Sam lowered her to the ground and looked up at Natasha. "She… HYDRA just…" he wrenched his eyes up from the dead woman. "Why are we alive? We should be the first on their list."

"I managed to hack the algorithm a little. Just enough to convince HYDRA we're not a threat. I didn't know Sharon would be here, or that she was on our side." Natasha shook her head and pulled on the weird electric mesh mask she had used before to infiltrate SHIELD. This time it gave her the appearance of a freckled twenty-something with round, innocent eyes—the type of person security wouldn't glance at twice. She handed another to Sam, who draped it on his face the way she'd showed him last night and activated it. "We have to get out of here."

Sam followed her down the stairs, focused on staying alive instead of what he had just seen. The truth didn't sink in until they reached the lobby. Dead workers lay everywhere while their former coworkers patrolled around the corpses, kicking one or two to make sure they were dead. The ones on the door looked up as Sam and Natasha came through and one raised his hand at them.

"Hail HYDRA."

* * *

The mass panic on the streets helped them get out of DC. Natasha was running on autopilot, Sam was pretty sure, just like he was, but autopilot for her consisted of successfully stealing a car, evading all traffic jams and checkpoints, and getting them to a deserted set of back roads out of the city, so it was hard to tell.

She finally pulled into a farmhouse somewhere around the middle of rural Virginia—a safehouse, Sam thought when he first looked at it. A good one, well disguised, with someone who must come around to provide cover; there were fresh tire tracks in the gravel drive and a freshly split woodpile.

"There might be some people here," Natasha said as she stopped the car. "They're friends, so don't get trigger happy on me."

But when they stepped inside, the farmhouse had the quiet, indefinable feel of an abandoned home. Sam looked at the action figures scattered on the floor of the entry, the crayon pictures stuck by magnets to the refrigerator, and the discolored patches on the wall, where framed photos had hung. "This isn't just a safehouse, is it?"

She shook her head. "A couple friends live here. I was going to evacuate them if they were still around. Come on, let's make a sweep and be sure there's nothing."

They moved through the house room by room, but Sam's first instinct had been right—whoever it was had packed in a hurry, but they'd cleared out. They headed back for the living room and Natasha hunted down the TV remote. Sam sprawled out on the couch to watch, while she perched at the edge of an armchair with a ballerina's good posture.

It was emergency broadcasts, of course, and HYDRA had taken over the airwaves. They started with footage of HYDRA agents running through Asia, Europe, America. Lists of governments that had surrendered, and the merciless destruction of those who hadn't. Texas had been nearly bombed into oblivion, as had Wakanda.

It was all real, Sam realized as he watched. For almost three years now, different enemies and aliens and monsters had tried to take over or destroy the world. And now one of them had finally done it. There was no putting the genie back in the bottle.

The propaganda switched over to something new. A live feed from one of the helicarriers. The moment Sam recognized it, he knew what it was going to be, but he couldn't look away.

Steve Rogers was dead. The Winter Soldier hoisted his body up by the collar like a kitten by the scruff of his neck. His helmet was gone, and he seemed so young now; vulnerable in a way that had never showed in life. Barnes's other, living hand had the red, white, and blue shield strapped to it. The camera was focused on the body and shield, but Sam caught a glimpse of the Soldier's eyes above his mask—ice blue and feral. He'd seen rabid animals with more control than that.

The only reason he didn't break down and cry right then and there was Natasha sitting next to him. She was still and calm, but the forced neutral on her face was just a little off. Instead, they sat through the lists of the dead. Iron Patriot. President Ellis. Nick Fury. Wakandan King T'Chaka, and Crown Prince T'Challa. Names he'd never heard of, but that made Natasha flinch: Ava Orlova, Bobbi Morse, Phil Coulson, Hank Pym. More that neither of them knew—Steven Strange, Trish Walker, and then he lost track—and he realized it was just the tip of the iceberg, the names "significant" enough for HYDRA to want them publicized. He watched, numb but accepting, until the last minutes of the broadcast came up.

"And we've just received word that we have another name to add to the list," the lead anchor said, her voice wobbling, the seat next to her empty. "Iron Man had been confirmed dead in his New York tower. Plans for the demolition of Tony Stark's—"

Natasha gasped like she had been punched in the stomach. That stricken look, the same one she'd given Sharon, was back on her face, and it didn't go away this time.

"Nat?"

"I could have saved him," she whispered. "I had time to erase him from HYDRA's kill list. But I thought he'd get into his suit in time, so I spent it covering our tracks instead of protecting him."

Sam looked over at the TV, which now showed a helicopter view of Stark's body hanging by a noose from the edge of the Tower, and switched it off.

"It's not your fault. You made the best call you could."

"I don't care whose fault it is. I care that he's dead."

"Natasha…" Sam had no idea what to say, so he went for the truth. "Don't do this. If you give up, I'm gonna go crazy, here."

She lowered her face almost to her knees, hands clutching her hair. The loss of control was, in its own way, a gut punch as bad as losing Iron Man. After a moment, her fingers loosened, although she kept her head down.

"Are you sure crazy is a bad thing?" Her voice was light, almost mocking. If it had been any other situation, he'd have thought she was joking.

"It is," Sam said. "We can't stop, Natasha. Steve wouldn't have wanted that. We have to do right by him."

She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Captain America. Still inspiring people from beyond the grave."

"It's not just for him. We failed, let the world down. And I think you and me, we're some of the only people left that have a chance of fixing it. We can't let our loss keep us from doing that."

"You mean that, don't you?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

He could almost see the moment Natasha changed. Tension slid out of her shoulders and she sat up. It was as if she had shed all emotion, all personal connections, in that one moment. Become the assassin again instead of his friend.

"You want to help me fight HYDRA?" she asked. "We do this my way. I'm no Steve Rogers, but I know something about surviving when people are trying to kill you."

"Yeah you do. What's the plan?"

The words flowed out of her, tactical and cold. "Find allies. HYDRA's eliminated Stark and Rogers, but they haven't taken out the rest of the Avengers or it would be all over the news. I don't have any way to contact Thor—he's in Asgard. If he comes swooping in to save the day, great, but we're not going to wait to be saved.

"Bruce Banner…" Emotion almost came back into her face, just a hint of wistfulness, before she locked it down again. "Fury tried to contact him before all this went down, recruit him to help stop HYDRA. But he's running experiments in the Arctic Circle with Jane Foster, we never made contact. I don't know how to reach him, and even if I could, there's no way HYDRA can capture or harm him. We'll count on him to fend for himself."

"Leaving Hawkeye."

"He's deep undercover in sub-Saharan Africa right now. So deep it was never on record, which is why he's still alive."

"But you know where?"

"He's my partner." She said it so simply. The way Sam had talked about Riley. The way Steve had talked about Barnes. Sam felt something twist in his gut.

"Let's bring him home."

* * *

 _"Where is he?"_ Natasha demanded. She spoke in Farsi this time, her voice nearly an octave deeper to disguise it, making it hard for Sam to understand.

She edged her knife under her victim's eye, cool and calm as he whimpered. A thin line of red ran down his cheek.

Sam had tried to stop her the first time they'd done this song and dance. He'd taken her to the side and tried to persuade her that she was better than that. Meanwhile, their mark managed to break free, attacked them, and by the end of it, Natasha had her hand buried in his intestines while he sang like a bird. Now, Sam didn't interfere, and the most these guys ended up with were a few paper cuts before they all but bared their souls to her.

 _"Please… my son."_

 _"He threatened your son?"_ Two months ago, Sam wouldn't have noticed anything in Natasha's voice. But weeks of hiding in gutters, stitching each other up with dental floss, stowing away in the landing gear of airplanes had taught him to understand Natasha Romanoff. He heard the disbelief.

 _"No."_ Their mark started to shake his head, then stopped as the knife pressed against the crease of his nose. _"He_ saved _my son. He rescued him from a crossfire between drug lords and your agents. Please, he is a good man."_

Natasha gave him a sweet smile and slowly bled the skin on his nose. _"And do you want your son to stay safe?"_

Typical Natasha. She wouldn't believe Barton could threaten a child, but she'd do it herself if it meant getting him back.

 _"I…"_

Something sharp pressed against the back of Sam's neck.

 _"Let him go."_

Sam gathered his muscles and spun to the side, the knife grazing his scalp. He brought his hand down on his attacker's arm, got the knife under control, but the man's other hand punched him in the face, then whipped something from behind his back and clobbered him in the head with it.

Stunned, vision blurry, Sam stumbled backward and got his foot up in front of him just in time—and smashed it into his attacker's stomach. He doubled over, but still swung the knife, and Sam raised his forearm to block, braced for the slash—

"Clint! Clint, stop!"

The knife stopped an inch from Sam's arm. "Natasha?"

"You can't recognize me when I disguise my voice? You're losing your touch."

"I thought you were _dead."_ Clint Barton—Hawkeye, and it was his unstrung bow that he'd hit Sam with—turned back to Sam, who slowly lowered his fists. "Who's this guy?"

"Sam Wilson," Sam said, still watching Barton warily through his watering eyes. Barton returned the guarded look with interest until Natasha spoke up.

"We can trust him."

And that was all it took. Sam might as well have stopped existing as Barton turned to Natasha and threw his arms around her.

* * *

The cave was cool and dark after the desert heat, small enough to feel crowded with three of them inside, and decorated with Clint's sleeping bag, empty crates, and old radio equipment. Sam couldn't help but feel the irony. He'd once combed through places like these looking for terrorists; now, propaganda probably cast him in that role.

"Stings a little, doesn't it?" Clint asked, pulling the trapdoor above the entrance shut and leaving them in the dim light cast by a camp lantern. "HYDRA wiped out most of the troublemakers in the region, leaving these areas abandoned. Turns out all you have to do to have peace in the third world is carpet bomb until pretty much everyone is dead."

Sam didn't answer. He pressed a hand to his head, trying to make the dizziness go away.

"Sorry. About the concussion."

"Forget about it," Sam managed. "So. What's the plan?"

Natasha had stretched out on Clint's sleeping bag. At Sam's words, she sat back up, but looked at Hawkeye instead of him.

Some kind of wordless communication passed between them, a language Sam couldn't hope to interpret. Natasha shook her head, and Clint stiffened. Natasha grimaced. "I get it. We can drop you back off in the States if you want."

"Wait, what?" Sam asked. "He's not staying with us?"

Natasha shrugged. "That's up to him."

"I hate to say it, but it's not," Sam said. "Not really. Look, man, I'm sorry, I know the whole world's gone mad. But you're like me and Cap and Nat. A soldier. And we've still got a job to do. We can't—"

He paused, several bits of intuition falling into place at once. Hawkeye was the least famous of the Avengers, the only one who had never lived at the Tower at some point. Known as the goofball of the team but never answering any personal questions in press conferences, fading into the background while flashier personalities like Iron Man and Thor dominated. The most there had been was rampant dating speculation pairing him with Black Widow, but she said that was a front to keep their private lives private.

And the moment the world had ended, she had headed straight for a "friend's" farmhouse, a place with kids, to make sure they were still alive. Sam had thought they were friends of hers, but…

"I don't know who's waiting for you back home. But you've got to realize, we're in no position to protect anyone right now. If anyone we love is alive, the best chance they have is if we take down HYDRA and make the world safe for everyone."

Clint's eyes slid over to Natasha, who spread her hands innocently. "I didn't say anything. Rogers recruits smart people."

He nodded and sighed.

"You don't have to do this," she said. "I came here to get you free. If you want to go back to try and find them, I won't hold it against you."

"You're asking me to make an impossible choice," Barton said. "Both of you. Thing is, I don't think it's one that has to be made."

He pulled a recording device out of his pocket and set it on the ground. He grinned at the look on Sam's face. "What? You didn't think I was just sitting on my ass waiting to be rescued, did you? Listen to this."

Sam listened, but all he could hear was a bunch of static and the high pitched whine of interference. Natasha, however, sat forward and had a look of excitement on her face.

"Is that—"

"An arc reactor." Clint spotted Sam's look of confusion. "One of Stark's inventions. They powered his suits and his chest—kept his heart going for awhile. They also interfere with radio signals if your machine's not calibrated right. Nat and I nearly had a mission wrecked a couple years ago because of feedback just like that."

The recording went off and Clint played it again. Now that Sam was listening, he could hear something a little different about the interference, something more musical and less head-splitting in its tone, maybe. It faded in and out from the other white noise in some kind of pattern.

"Morse code?" Sam guessed.

"VIC cipher. Old Soviet spy stuff, way more complicated than Morse. It gave me coordinates to a place thirty-five miles out, just east of an abandoned village, and says to be there at 1200 in two days." Clint pulled a well-worn map from his pocket and pointed at the spot. Sam stared at it, trying not to get his hopes up too much.

"But Iron Man's supposed to be dead."

"So are you. And when Tony Stark 'died,' his arc reactor and all the suits in Stark Tower lost power for good. HYDRA's been trying to recreate them, but no luck. Which means that the only person this could be coming from…"

Natasha had joined Clint at the map. "You know there's a HYDRA base right between us and the rendezvous point?"

"I was on the way back from scouting it when you two made your grand entrance."

"And?"

"Doable with you two here. Biggest worries are that they'll follow us or call in the helicarriers to blast us out of the sky. I can take care of their vehicles and the main communications room, but there are satellite phones scattered all over the place."

"I can track those down," Natasha said. "And Sam's good at sabotage, he can lend you a hand."

"What's your plan for the radio room?" Sam asked.

Natasha snorted and answered before Clint could. "Clint's a one-hit wonder when it comes to mayhem. He's going to sneak into the ammunition storage and get supplies to blow it up."

"That hurts, Nat. I would do no such thing." Clint put his hand to his heart, and shook his head. "The ammo's too well guarded. I checked."

She raised one, delicate eyebrow at him. "So you've got a plan that _doesn't_ involve explosions?"

"I didn't say _that_. Just have to get creative about where I get my explosives."

* * *

Clint was crazy.

That was the only explanation Sam could come up with. While Sam hopped from foot to foot, trying to keep warm, trying _not_ to think about what they were about to do, Hawkeye selected an arrow, inspected it, and assessed the distance between them and the HYDRA camp, all while keeping up his steady monologue.

"I mean, the deep dish in Chicago is really good, but New York's the classic, you know? Pizza that you have to fold in half because the slice is so big. Lots of grease, and _pepperoni._ God, I miss good pepperoni."

Sam glanced over at Natasha, trying to gauge if this was normal for Clint before a mission, but she had the same unreadable expression as always. Didn't even look cold. Damn Russians.

"Never been big on the California style, though. They put pineapple and vegetables and all kinds of weird stuff. Nobody thinks 'gee, I really want to eat healthy tonight, guess I'll order pizza.'"

Nat cleared her throat, and Sam's ears pricked up, hoping for some sanity.

"Make the shot and I'll buy. Brick oven, meat lovers, thin crust, from that place in New Jersey."

"Done."

Sam threw his hands in the air and pretended to walk away. Clint gave him a confused look.

"Where are you going? We're about to start the good part."

"'The good part?'"

"Yeah. See that sentry over there?"

Sam looked over the boulder he was crouched behind. The vague silhouette of a person pacing the perimeter of the camp came into view. Ten steps one way, ten the other. Not too seasoned, Sam could see it in his overly-crisp walk; probably a new recruit, fresh out of basic. But as long as he had a pair of eyes, he could sound the alarm.

"You can get him in one shot? Seems like it'd be out of range of a bow."

Clint laughed. "This is why I love having new guys around. Come on, Wilson, I'm not hitting him. That's the _amateur_ move. Full pizza, you said?"

"If I don't die of old age first."

Clint didn't hesitate. He nocked the arrow, and then drew and released in one smooth movement.

There was a split second of silence, and then a pop as the arrow hit a fuse box. The sentry turned to look as white sparks started flying, ruining the man's night vision. The arrow itself had somehow ricocheted after hitting, leaving only the hole in the fuse box as proof it had been there.

Sam realized Natasha and Clint had already moved, not waiting to see if Hawkeye hit the target, and caught up quickly. Clint stooped at a shadow no bigger than his arm and picked up the arrow.

"Good luck," Natasha murmured when they passed the first row of tents, and slipped away into the dark.

"Stay alive! You owe me a pizza!" Clint hissed after her. Sam had a glimpse of Natasha's silhouette flipping them the bird. He still had no idea how she planned to find all of the satellite phones in time, and she'd only given him a smile when he asked.

He and Clint followed the line of tents, now walking straight and tall, mimicking the assured stride of the HYDRA agents. In the dark, wearing their dusty clothes, they could pass as the enemy.

"Another sentry on the right," Clint muttered. "Back in a sec."

He split off to one side, and Sam could have sworn he heard him humming _Mission Impossible_ as he went.

Sam shook his head and kept going. A weird rush filled him, different from the kind he got when fighting with Natasha—heady and more reckless. Maybe it was Hawkeye's crazy enthusiasm infecting him, but the crunch of gravel seemed louder in his ears, the night cold slid against his bare neck like a razor, and his fingers tingled with the itch, the need to do something. He was on a night mission in the middle of an enemy base, and for the first time since Cap died, it felt _right._ He realized he was singing the theme to _Mission Impossible_ under his breath as he walked, too.

The line of Humvees loomed up in the dark like huddled beasts, but there was no guard; Clint must have taken care of them. Sam hopped into the passenger side of the first one and yanked the battery out from under the seat when there was a _thunk_ at the engine. He drew his knife—a gunshot would make the whole camp come running—and slithered out the door, only to find Clint mauling the engine. He glanced up at Sam, weapon in hand, and gave him a grin.

"Stop fooling around; this is serious. You have the battery?"

"Yeah." Sam sheathed his knife and grabbed it.

"Good man. Siphon off the diesel and grab the other batteries while I sabotage."

Sam watched him tear back into the engine with an almost indecent enthusiasm and shook his head. "SHIELD should have made your codename Poltergeist."

Clint looked up, a quip already half off his lips, when his eyes caught on something to Sam's right. "Damn it."

"What's up?"

"Bird and two Humvees are missing. Must be running a night mission."

Sam turned and gave the field a closer look. Sure enough, one of the landing areas was suspiciously empty. "How screwed are we?"

"On a scale of one to Hulk smash? Four and a half. Maybe five. Communications aren't long range on any of them. Long as the rest of the job goes right, they won't signal the helicarriers. But they'll still be able to follow us."

"Nothing we can do about it, either way," Sam said. "Unless you want to abort?"

"Come on, Wilson, where's your sense of adventure?" There was an underlying seriousness to his tone, though; they both know they _couldn't_ back out now. They had to make it to the signal, and this was their only chance.

And so they kept going, wrecking the vehicles and accumulating batteries and fuel. Clint dashed off every ten minutes or so to take out other guards, then started making some 'improvements' on the batteries, while Sam finished his work and carried their plunder to the side of the communications shack. It was one of the few real buildings, made of freshly poured concrete and cinderblocks. He dug a quick ditch along the back wall and sandwiched the modified batteries inside in a pattern that Clint had drawn up earlier. Hawkeye followed a couple of minutes later, finished with the last of the choppers, and drenched the whole thing in fuel. He turned to Sam with a devilish grin.

"Boom time."

The fumes made them both lightheaded, and they staggered back to take shelter behind the cars. Clint looked like a cross between a drunk and a child at Christmas. He attached something small, with a couple of wires sticking out of it, to the shaft of an arrow and looked over at the wall—Sam couldn't see the mound of batteries from here, but Clint seemed satisfied. "Bang."

He fired as he said it, but nothing happened. Sam frowned and glanced at Hawkeye. He was watching where the arrow had disappeared, and Sam saw him mouthing words: "Four… three… two… one—"

The explosion sent battery cases and bits of cinderblock flying. Hawkeye punched the air, and Sam was surprised he didn't shout with glee. HYDRA members poured out of the tents, rushing to the explosion like ants when the nest got kicked, only to stop when they reached the white smoke—not just smoke, but sulfuric acid fumes from the batteries. Fumes that, now that Sam thought about the wind, seemed to be drifting towards…

"Time to go," he muttered to Hawkeye.

"What?" Clint's mind seemed to catch up with him as he saw the smoke. "Oh, oh yeah."

Still riding the adrenaline high, they ran down the line of ruined cars to the one they had left that was still functioning. Clint hopped into the driver's seat, Sam piled into shotgun, and just as he was looking around, starting to worry, Natasha darted around and crammed into the seat with him.

"Let's go!" she said, and Hawkeye took off, zooming through the chaos, swerving as occasional soldiers tried to shoot at them.

They were almost to the perimeter when an officer lunged for their car. Clint tried to swerve, but the guy latched on and got one arm through the open window, gripping the frame tight to stay on. His sidearm was in his hand, and it discharged wildly. Nat all but slithered over Sam, ignoring the bullet that flew right past her cheek, and fired point blank into his elbow.

The man let go, screaming, and then they were in open desert. Clint hit the gas as the noise of the chaos faded. Nat picked herself up and folded herself almost primly into the back seat.

"And you boys thought it would be difficult."

Sam didn't know who laughed first. All he knew was that he was exhilarated, incredibly lucky, and half-out of his mind with exhaustion, and they were _howling_ , Clint shouting about the explosion and Natasha doubled over in the back seat, and it didn't stop for a full five minutes.

"We headed in the right direction?" Sam asked when things had finally quieted again.

"Need to head a little more north now that you mention it," Clint slowed a bit to look around. "There's—gah!"

"What's wrong?" Natasha was all business again, sliding forward to look. There was a dark stain against the thigh of Clint's khaki pants. The ricocheting bullet had gone straight through his leg.

"I'm good."

"You're not—"

"I said I'm good! We don't have another option, Nat."

Just like that, the euphoria was gone. Natasha slithered up to take over driving, while Sam put pressure on the wound, trying to find something that would stanch the blood—he finally raided Natasha's pack and took her last tampon for the job—then tore strips off his spare shirt to tie it up.

He wiped the blood off his hands with the rest of the rag, and checked how much fuel they had left—they'd make it to maybe five miles from the coordinates. That had seemed like plenty when they were planning. Before there was a chopper after them and one person was shot.

But Clint was right: they didn't have another option. He looked at Nat and Clint and knew they were thinking the same thing.

"We get as close as we can," he said. "And then we run."


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Hunter _snored._

Sam had thought he'd be able to take it. He was bone tired by the time the team had wrung the last of their questions from him, and besides, he'd learned way back before he'd ever met Cap to sleep anywhere, any time. He'd ignored the rest of the group's smirks and assured an anxious Pepper that he'd be fine wherever she assigned him. And for the first few hours of sleep, he'd been so exhausted it hadn't mattered, but now…

Hunter snored again. The entire room shook.

Giving up on sleep, Sam rolled out of bed and ambled through the halls, trying to find his way back to the kitchen. He still wasn't sure that he understood the rules for this place, the Pocket, but he thought the layout might be shifting on him. Either that or he was more tired than he thought, because instead of ending up where he wanted, he opened a door and stepped into the luxurious bathroom he'd caught a glimpse of before. Sam was starting to get the idea that the Pocket, or maybe whoever was piloting it, had a mind of its own.

He nearly fell asleep in the water, and only pulled himself out when it started to cool. He could have sworn it stayed warm longer than it should have—and he was quite sure that the deodorant and change of clothes he found when he finally emerged had been in his wardrobe, not the bathroom.

On a whim, he gave up on trying to find the kitchen, and just wandered, letting the halls send him where they thought he should go. He ended up in a small room with large, squashy couches, stacks of cards and board games, and—weirdly—one of those arcade basketball games, the kind where you had to hit as many free throws as you could before the buzzer sounded.

"Hunter and Trip got drunk," a voice said behind him. Sam turned and saw Bruce Banner looking at the game, his hair sticking out like he'd just woken up. "They decided it wouldn't be at all conspicuous to drag an entire arcade booth back into the Pocket in the middle of the day. Hunter almost lost an ear for it in the resulting firefight, but he's still proud."

"The Basketball Incident."

"Yeah."

Sam grinned; for a second, Bruce did too, and then he swallowed and started to look guilty. Like he couldn't allow himself to smile when the world had turned to shit.

No way was that going to stand. Sam threw the ball straight into his chest. Bruce caught it on instinct, and gave Sam a confused look.

"Prepare to be demolished."

Slowly the smile crept back onto Bruce's face. He spun and sent the basketball straight through the hoop—the whole game lit up with dancing red lights and tinny music started to play.

Sam was halfway through wiping the floor with the Avenger on his turn when someone else wandered in—Wong, the man Sam had seen piloting the Pocket before. He paused, unsure what to say, but Bruce grinned and motioned to the game.

"Your time's almost up."

Sam started shooting frantically, but the distraction had taken too long. Bruce topped him by four points. "Oh come on! Doesn't count!"

"If you say so. That's Wong, by the way. I ran across him years ago, when I went through Nepal. He uses magic."

Sam gave Bruce a questioning look but, when he didn't elaborate, shrugged it off and passed the ball across the room to Wong. He caught it and raised his eyebrows at them.

"Uh… you know how to play this game, right?" Sam said, suddenly unsure if he should explain. "You're supposed to—"

But the supposed magician had already walked up to the net, without a change in expression, and shot the ball. He picked up the next one from the gutter and sent it flying before the first one had cleared the net. Then another. And another. Sam watched in amazement as, with a machine-like efficiency, he cycled through the balls, earning bonus time after bonus time, until he finally hit eighty points, set the balls down—the timer still running—and walked away. The game made an excited buzzing sound, and Sam realized the high score had been broken.

"Uh…"

"People only compete with Wong one time," Bruce said. "Now that Clint's here, we'll have to see if we can get them to go against each other."

Sam grinned and picked up the basketball again. "Two out of three?"

Five games later, during which Wong set a new high score two times, and Sam proudly claimed his title of second place, Bruce finally admitted defeat. Sam punched the air and grabbed a spot on the couch. Despite everything, he felt better here than he had since first going on the run. Not having to watch his back, sleep, and hot water—it felt like it had been years since those basic luxuries had been available. A few more days of this, and he felt like he could take on HYDRA alone.

"How long until we have to go out and join the real world?"

Wong looked at Bruce, who shrugged.

"We just raided for food, but that was necessities not a full run, and Jemma's going to need to restock the clinic after treating Clint. I'd say about a week."

"Really? A whole week?"

"You can ask Trip for a more precise date. He's our quartermaster, he'll have a better idea. And Hunter may need to check in with his source again if she's still in danger, but he never lets any of us come for that."

The door slid open, and Pepper ambled in, this time wearing jeans and an AC/DC shirt with the sleeves down to her elbows. Sam felt his spine straighten automatically.

"Oh please," she waved him down. "You didn't go all stiff and soldier-like every time you caught sight of Steve Rogers, did you?"

"Fair enough," Sam relaxed back into his seat. There _was_ something similar about Pepper and Cap, now that he thought about it. An unconscious note to their bearing that just drew out the best in those around them.

"We were just filling Sam in on our schedule," Bruce said. "When we need to resupply, that sort of thing."

Pepper gave him a small smile, like she knew what he was thinking. "Don't worry, Sam. We have plenty of time for you to rest up before your next outing. The Pocket's secure."

"Appreciate it. How long before we have a real mission?"

"Food supply—"

"Every one or two weeks, yeah, Dr. Banner told me. What's after that, though? What's the big picture for defeating HYDRA?"

"There isn't one," Bruce said quietly.

"What do you mean?"

The three others traded glances. Sam felt like he was missing something obvious, and as none of them said anything, the answer dawned on him.

"We just _gave up?_ Without a fight?" It was a bad joke, it had to be. Bruce and Pepper hadn't been living out there, faced with the reality of what HYDRA had done. They didn't realize how badly the people still under HYDRA's thumb _needed_ them right now. To walk away from those who counted on the Avengers…

"Who says we didn't fight?" Bruce asked. "After HYDRA took over, we fought back with everything we had. It's a miracle any of us made it out alive."

"What happened?"

"Thor came to earth. He and Pepper and I tried to lead the revolution, but…" he trailed off, and stared at the table. Sam recognized the look in his eyes. He'd seen it in the mirror in the weeks after he'd lost Riley.

"HYDRA was ready," Pepper said. "They knew we had heroes, so they made some of their own. We already knew about the Winter Soldier, their mad dog enforcer, but when Thor came, they unleashed Quicksilver, a speedster, and the Scarlet Witch, a… well, I don't know how to describe what she does."

"A sorceress," Wong said. Sam realized it was the first time he'd actually heard him speak. His face hadn't changed expression at all, but his fingers were clenched white at the knuckles, as if he was imagining them crushing around someone's windpipe.

"Whatever she is, we never saw either of them coming," Pepper said. "Even Hunter's mole didn't know that they existed. But they killed Thor in about ten minutes flat. And then, when the Hulk was fighting in LA months later, HYDRA nuked the entire city to try and get him. Thousands of people were killed."

"Hundreds of thousands," Bruce whispered. "And the Witch… she couldn't kill me, but she did something to me. Got into my head. I was out of control, worse than anything I've had before when the big guy takes over. Not all of the dead in LA were killed by the bomb."

"They would have died either way," Pepper said. "You or the bomb, they were doomed no matter what."

"It doesn't change things. Not to me."

She gave him a sympathetic look and cleared her throat. "After Thor died, we thought Asgard might rally with us, help us take down HYDRA. It... didn't go that way. Thor was dead and Loki, his brother, demanded retribution without caring which mortal was responsible. We sealed off the connection between Asgard and our world, and even more of our team died in the attempt. Jane… Jane didn't make it. Something broke in her when Thor died—I don't think it was even losing him so much as realizing the world wasn't going to go back, that there was no one coming to save us."

"And then what?" Sam asked, enthralled despite himself.

"And then you get to us now, the remnants of two failed campaigns. An Asgardian turned mortal. A magician from an ancient order that's been destroyed. Hulk, who can't leave the Pocket without HYDRA bombing a city. Two low ranking field agents and a scientist from SHIELD. And a civilian tortured out of her mind."

"And you."

Pepper gave a bitter laugh. "You know I could barely throw a punch when this all started? Heimdall's been teaching me, but I'm still nowhere near Tony's level. I do what I can, and I'm used to the suit now, but I'm no Iron Man."

Sam nodded slowly.

"They won, Sam. We have to be realistic. Believe me, if I thought we could beat HYDRA, I'd sacrifice myself in a heartbeat. Everyone here would. But we can't. And I refuse to send what's left of us out on suicide missions if there's no benefit. HYDRA's killed off too many good men and women already. We don't have to like the world as it is, but we do have to accept it. Adapt. And survive however we can."

Sam tried to find words. To protest that this couldn't be it, that it wasn't supposed to end like this. Pepper gave him an almost pitying look and stood up. "Wong, you're due for another shift change in ten minutes."

She got halfway to the door when Sam got his voice back.

"Cap never would have stood for this. _Natasha_ wouldn't. And I didn't know Tony Stark, but I don't think he'd just let this go by."

Pepper had half turned, and her face went white at the mention of Iron Man—her freckles stood out bright, her hair almost obscenely red against her pale cheeks. Sam felt a second's regret, but she never lost her composure.

"You're right. They didn't stand for it. That's why they died." Her mouth gave a funny twist, like she was about to cry, and she left quickly. Wong looked at Sam with the same deadpan expression as before, only now it somehow seemed accusatory. Then he stood up and followed her out. Sam turned to Bruce.

"We can't stop with this. This can't… living like this isn't an answer."

"What do you suggest?"

"Fight back. Do something—anything. Even if it's doomed, it's better than living on our knees."

Bruce stared at his hands. Sam would have thought that he was softening, coming over to his side, except that same, glassy-eyed look he'd had when he described LA was back on his face.

"Do you know how many kids were caught in the bomb?"

"I—"

"Because I do. I ran the numbers." He shook his head. "You're worried about living on your knees, and that's admirable. I'm worried about whether I should live at all."

* * *

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah. Just move slowly; she startles."

Sam slipped into Laura's room and quietly shut the door behind him. Clint hadn't left the room since he'd found his wife, and judging by the cot next to her bed, he didn't plan to any time soon.

Right now, she was sitting on the floor on the side of the room, knees folded to her chest. Her head jerked up and she met Sam's eyes for a panicked split-second before lowering it, like she was afraid he'd hurt her if he knew she expected it.

Clint had taken a rocking chair opposite the door, and he headed for that, staying close to the walls the whole time. He knew Laura would react like a spooked animal if he made one wrong move, so instead he pretended no interest and turned his back on her when he reached Clint.

"How's the injury doing?"

Clint shrugged. "Healing. Simmons knows her stuff."

"They probably have a place around here that you could work out. Stretch your leg, keep it flexible and strong. You ever need me to watch her, let me know."

"I won't. But thanks for the offer."

Sam debated mentioning how badly the job of caregiver could break someone down if they didn't have support, but decided not to. Clint had barely been with Laura for two days. Let them settle into a routine, let Clint work his way through the worst of the guilt and burden, before he tried to change things up even more.

 _Settle into a routine._ He really was starting to accept Pepper's views, at least that they were in this for the long haul.

"Hey, Tasha said you were a shrink, right?"

"Peer to peer counselor."

"Close enough. She… does she seem any better to you? Than when we came in, I mean?"

Sam turned a little, and looked at Laura from the corner of his eye. She was still watching Sam with the wariness of a trapped animal, and when she noticed him staring, she dropped her head to her knees again. He sighed.

"She's at the edge of the room, not the middle, and keeping her back to the wall. Her body language is defensive, all hunched together, trying to protect herself and stay small. But she's watching me, not you, even though you've been interacting with her more. What was she doing before I came in?"

"Drawing circles on the floor. Muttering to herself."

"Looking at you?"

"Not unless I talked directly to her. Is that good?"

Sam gave a helpless shrug, reminded of the vets who had been admitted on suicide watch, the agonized family meetings where their loved ones asked if any change, any little difference at all, meant an improvement. Then, he had tried to remain upbeat, to keep hope alive even if it was slim. He couldn't do that now; too much had been burned away, and he couldn't make himself give a positive spin.

"It sounds like she's getting more comfortable around you. Like she doesn't worry so much about you being in her space. But—"

"That's good then, right? Jemma says it took her weeks for them to get that far."

"It means you might be able to stay near without scaring her too much. Might even mean you can help her somewhere down the road. But I don't think it tells you if her mind's recovering or not."

"But she did it faster with me. That has to mean she's improving or recognized me or something."

"Or that you've been here a lot more consistently than Jemma, or she's more locked into her own little world, or she's too exhausted to fight like she used to. Maybe it's a good sign, but I just don't know, man. I can't give you false hope."

Clint sighed. "Thanks. I think I'd have rather you lied, though."

Sam didn't say anything.

"So. Why are you here?" Clint seemed to realize how his flat voice had made that sound. "Sorry. I didn't mean… sorry."

Sam took a seat on the ground, ignoring how his legs popped as he got down. He had loved his wings, but landing had been hell on his knees. "Would you believe it if I said I needed a friendly face right now? I know we didn't work together long, but…"

"I know what you mean. Thanks."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Laura resumed humming, so quiet Sam almost thought he was imagining it.

"Can I ask you something?" Sam asked.

"Yeah."

"It's kind of personal."

"Just ask. I don't have to answer."

"What happened in Budapest?"

Clint stared at him like he'd grown an extra head, so Sam hurried to explain. "Natasha refused to tell me, and she referenced it when we were hiding in an airplane, disabling a bomb, and infiltrating a ritual in the middle of a jungle. I have no—"

Clint laughed. It was a disbelieving, bitter laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. "She was pulling your leg, man. No bombs or tribal dances involved, at least not as I remember it. Budapest was actually…"

Sam kept him going for at least a couple hours. Stories about Natasha, crazy missions, Nick Fury, training as an archer, his kids, and—he looked like he could hardly believe himself as he told it—meeting his wife for the first time. Sometimes he would pause in the middle of telling something, and others he cried or laughed, but he kept talking, with Sam hardly having to encourage him.

Sam had expected the talking to ease Clint's mind. Trapped with all his thoughts, all the guilt, letting it out in some way was going to help—it was one of the easiest ways for therapy to reach someone. What Sam hadn't expected was how much it helped him, too. With all the pain HYDRA had caused, it felt good to put some of it to rest, even if it was just one person's.

It felt like fighting back.

"So why _are_ you here?" Clint finally asked again. His voice had gone scratchy, but there was more life to it, somehow, than before. "What's going on out there that's so bad you decided to sucker me into a therapy session?"

"Caught that, huh?"

Clint shrugged, but there was a half-smile on his lips, so Sam figured he wasn't too mad.

"I came in to recruit you."

"Recruit me? For what?"

He struggled to put it into words. "They want us to stop. Pepper, Bruce, everyone here, they say HYDRA's won and we need to accept that. Make a life here, in the Pocket."

"You disagree."

"I did. Now… I don't know."

Clint waited.

"We could survive like this. Fight HYDRA simply by existing. Keep hope alive, preserve freedom for ourselves, in one form or another. Maybe pass on what we know to the next generation and hope that they do a better job than we did. Laura would be safe. You could heal. Know that you would always be there for her."

Hawkeye stared at Laura. She'd fallen asleep, her head lolling against the wall. Her fingers scraped against the ground, trapped even in her dreams.

"Tough shit."

"Huh?"

"You told me back in the caves that I was a soldier and I had a job. That change when I wasn't looking?"

"No, but—"

"Then I'm going to keep fighting." He gestured to Laura. "They took everything from me. Nat, my kids, SHIELD, the Avengers. Laura's body is still here, but she's not, and I know what you're not saying. You don't think she ever will be. If you give up too, I'll stand up to HYDRA alone. For Laura. And my kids."

"You won't be alone." Sam met his eyes. "You realize we probably won't win? And we're almost sure to die, even if we do."

"Hell yeah. But we'll make them bleed first."


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5.**

"Sam. Come on, Sam, wake up."

"Guh?" Sam forced his eyes open, and found Clint standing over him, hand still on his shoulder. "Really? Do you have any idea how hard it was to get to sleep with Hunter in here?" As if to emphasize his point, a snore echoed through the room. Clint jumped and turned with his fists up.

"Is he hiding a chainsaw?"

Sam groaned and flopped back down, but Clint shook him again.

"Come on, I need you with me."

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Do you?"

Touché. It was difficult to keep track in the Pocket. Not that Sam was giving up that easily. He flipped onto his stomach and pulled the pillow over his head. "I don't know how super-archers do it, but mortals like me need to _sleep."_

"Laura's asleep."

"Lucky her."

"Which means we can train. Get me back on my feet to fight HYDRA."

Sam half-lifted the pillow. Even in the gloom, he could see the determined set of Clint's jaw—it was the same look Natasha had had when she was _going_ to get her way, no matter what he did. Hunter gave another, earsplitting snore.

"Fine," he grumbled, climbing out of bed and feeling around for his shoes. Clint pressed them into his hands.

"Meet you there in ten."

Eight minutes later, a gym bag slung over one shoulder, Cap's shield on his other arm, and in a marginally better mood without Hunter's snores surrounding him, Sam wandered down the corridor into a large gym. Like he'd hoped yesterday, there were a couple treadmills, along with a large sparring ring, boxing bags, and weights. A glass wall on one side showed a shooting gallery, no doubt soundproofed so those in the gym could work out in peace. Clint was standing at the bar in front of the mirror that ran along the opposite wall. He raised his eyebrows at the shield, but went back to extending his leg in a slow front kick without comment.

"How's the leg?" Sam asked.

"Hurts." His knee straightened, waist high, and he grunted, then started bending it back again.

Sam ignored the treadmills and started a slow jog around the room, leaping over and around the weight machines set against the wall. It felt good to just run again for the joy of it, not because he was being chased.

"Want to spar?" Clint asked when they'd both warmed up enough. Sam gave him a thoroughly unimpressed look.

"Not until Jemma clears you. I was carrying your bloodless ass here three days ago, no way am I doing it again."

Clint frowned, but didn't argue. Agents like him and Natasha, Sam had learned, became very good at knowing exactly how far they could push their bodies. Sam turned back to the gym bag he'd brought, and pulled out a bow and quiver. Clint practically grabbed them from his hands.

"Where did you get _these?"_

"You had them on you when I hauled you in here, and Jemma put them away. Figured you'd need to keep your skills up if you were going to stay the Amazing Hawkeye."

Clint tested the bowstring, then headed for the gallery. He gave Sam an infectious smile over his shoulder. "Care for a free performance?"

"Nah." Sam eyed the shield. "I've got my own skills to work on."

Once Clint was safely ensconced in the shooting gallery, Sam knelt in front of the shield, hesitating.

He'd grabbed it before. Passed it to Cap a time or two. Stolen it from the Soldier. Carried it to the gym just now.

But this was different. Taking up Captain America's shield, training with it… it was stepping into a role. Filling the void left by the loss of America's hero. If Sam did this, he couldn't help but think he was pledging himself to Steve Rogers' cause. To fight for what was right.

 _It's just a weapon_ , he tried to tell himself as he picked it up. He swore it felt heavier than it had carrying it in fifteen minutes ago. _I need to lose my awe of it if I'm going to be any good at using it._

He practiced simply throwing it in a straight line at first. Getting the straps to detach in a heartbeat and aiming without his hands were skill sets in and of themselves, and it was a good thing the bags, treadmills, and walls were all so sturdy, because the shield glanced off all of them at some point or another. He finally managed to send it in a somewhat straight line when he heard Clint come out of the range and stand behind him, watching.

"Try stepping into the swing," he said. "It'll increase your distance and power."

Sam did a couple of times, noticing the change.

"Cap didn't do that."

"Cap had the thing for nearly a hundred years and a serum for superhuman strength. Scale back your expectations," Clint said. "And as important as hitting is with that, learning how to block is just as important. We can drill if you want—both hand to hand and with me using a ranged weapon, and you deflecting."

Sam thought of Hawkeye shooting at him, and grimaced. "Uh, that doesn't sound like a great idea."

"I'll attach sucker cups instead of arrow heads."

The image of that was too amusing for Sam not to smile. Now that Clint wasn't using the range, he headed inside, pleased when he managed to hit the paper silhouette dead in the chest.

"We need to talk strategy," he said as he went to collect the shield. If only he could figure out Cap's method of rebounding it back to him…

"I figured you'd say that," Clint said. "Where's your head at?"

"I think we should go after HYDRA's helicarriers. The Winter Soldier and those other two are flashy, but let's be real: those ships are what keep them in power. They have three of them, spread over the globe, never needing to land, and between them, they can shoot anywhere on earth within two hours. If we're serious about bringing HYDRA down, our first step is to destroy at least one so that any future fights have time to succeed."

"Any idea how you'd take one out?"

Sam gave a despairing shrug as he threw the shield again. It screwed up his aim and sent a spider-web of cracks down the gallery's glass where it hit. Great. "Our plan back at the start was to hack their algorithm and turn the carriers' guns on each other. But now they're out of range of each other, and unless you have incredibly advanced computer codes handy…"

"You're thinking about it all wrong. You—"

Clint paused while Sam threw again; the results were better this time. He spoke up once the echoes died out. "You want to know a secret? People always think high tech makes things more secure. Not true. It gives you more parts to break, more things that can go wrong. It's why I use arrows, not an Iron Man suit. They're simple. Clean. Those ships? Sure, they're top of the line, but that means they're full of explosives and engines and pilots. Pressure points, ones that I can manipulate."

"You sure?"

"I've done it before. On a carrier with the rest of the Avengers defending it."

Sam decided not to ask.

"There's another problem," he said. "This mission, it's not exactly something we can do as a day trip. If we head out to do this, there's no coming back here."

He'd stopped his practice so that he could watch Clint as he said it. Going by the look on his face, he'd already put the idea together himself, but Sam couldn't get much else from his expression.

"If you want out, I won't blame you," Sam said. "Your job is to protect her. Wish I still had someone like that."

Clint grimaced. "Did you know she and I talked about this, once?" he asked. "Well, not this exactly. No one saw this coming. But… if she was ever injured or kidnapped for leverage against me or something similar. She said I'd better not let other people die for her, that she couldn't have that on her conscience. I told her no way in hell would I ever leave her. Biggest fight we ever had."

"What did you decide?"

"I tried to say no, but I never could win in a fight against that woman. She walked out on me. Said if our relationship was something that could be used to put other people in danger, she couldn't allow it. I didn't get her to move back in until I agreed to her terms."

Sam tried to find the words, but the best he could come up with was "She sounds like quite the woman. I wish I could have met her when she was well."

"She'd have liked you."

Sam tried to picture it, but he couldn't imagine Laura without the darting eyes and hunched shoulders. "You know, she won't know if you don't follow the agreement now. And she never could have foreseen something like this."

Clint looked tempted, but he shook his head. "I'm not breaking the most important promise I ever made to her. I have to keep fighting, like she wanted."

"If you're sure."

He nodded, then paused. "Just promise me something."

"Anything."

"I know there's no way we win. No way we make it out of this alive. But if you do, look after her. I know these guys will too, but it's not—"

"You don't have to ask. I won't let her be hurt again."

* * *

Jemma paced around the kitchen, ticking off items on her fingers. "—as much O negative blood as you can carry, four by four gauze packs, medical tape, quarter inch packing strips soaked in iodine—they come in a little brown bottle—another box of non-latex gloves, size small, and some long Q-tips."

Trip looked up from the list he was writing and stared at her. She shot him a curious look, but kept up her nervous walking. "Long Q-tips," he repeated. "You want us to raid a Sokovian hospital to find _Q-tips._ "

"They're used to pack dressings into a narrow, deep wound," Sam said. "She probably ran out with Clint's bandages."

"That's right." Jemma gave him a bright smile. "It's so nice to have another medic on the team."

Trip threw up his hands. "Alright, alright, you win. Any other medical supplies?"

"I really should come with you. We're nearly out of blood, and—"

"We'll get them, Jem. We're expendable, you're not."

Jemma stopped, grabbed Trip by the shoulders, and shook him in his seat. "You are _not_ expendable. Don't you dare say that."

"No one here is expendable," Pepper said. Like the rest of them, she was bundled up in drab, winter clothes to blend in—it seemed strange for it not to be the classic rock t-shirts or Iron Man suit. She fiddled with her bracelets, programmed with tech that would call the suit to her, as she spoke. "But we all have different jobs, Simmons. We need you to be close to the hospital wing, not out where you could be delayed or separated from us. Having you here, ready to treat us, could be the difference between life and death if a raid goes south. Hunter, do you have the maps?"

He unfolded a giant, hand drawn map on the table.

"Alright, this may not be entirely accurate. I only went to Sokovia twice, and one of them involved a head injury and two evenings with a _lovely_ dancer. But Dr. Banner should put us down here, a quarter mile between their main hospital and a market. HYDRA holds the fortress overlooking the city, but as long as no one is stupid enough to head towards it, there's no reason for that to be a problem."

"I still do not understand our choice of Sokovia," Heimdall said, as Wong drew the map closer to review it. They'd all studied it so closely that Sam could see the streets in his mind, but he knew how it was before a battle—you had to make sure everything was in its place. He did the same with his guns. "Why not one of the American cities that you all know better?"

"Because HYDRA's started to _expect_ us there," Hunter said. "Besides, Sokovia's where Quicksilver and that Scarlet Bitch come from, so it's getting well supplied with food. I'll feel like a little less of a bastard stealing from them."

Heimdall's frown said he still didn't agree, but he stayed silent as Pepper took control again.

"The food will be the heaviest to carry, and is our most urgent concern. Heimdall, Wong, Trip, and I will get that. Sam and Hunter will take care of the hospital, but I'm only a radio call away if anything goes wrong—I can signal the suit remotely and be anywhere in the city within three minutes."

"You're forgetting one vital detail." Everyone looked up to see Clint striding in, no sign of a limp. He'd practiced all day yesterday to hide it. "Me. I'm healthy enough to go on this trip, and you could use someone like me."

Pepper bit her lip. "I was planning to have you stay here. Both because you're too recognizable and to let you give your leg a little more rest."

"I can take care of the face," Clint said, holding out one of Natasha's netted face masks. "And Dr. Simmons already cleared my leg for duty yesterday."

Jemma flushed from her face straight down past her shirt collar as they all turned to stare at her. "Well, yes, I did. Technically there's no longer any medical danger with exertion, although whether or not he feels back up to one hundred percent…"

"Even at eighty, I'm still one of the best fighters here." Clint gave Pepper an easy grin. "Come on, Coach, put me in. I can play."

"I could use him with me," Sam put in, just like they'd planned. "Give your group Hunter, so you have an extra hand with the food."

"Yeah, I'd love to go to the market," Hunter said, perking up.

"We don't need any more alcohol or pub food," Pepper said. "But I don't think Clint should be carrying a lot of extra weight, like he would with me, either. Sam, Hunter, are you all right with it being the three of you on the hospital?"

Sam shared a quick glance with Clint, and he knew they were thinking the same thing: they'd have to find a way to ditch the mercenary without getting caught. Still, if they couldn't manage something as simple as this, figuring out how to take HYDRA on their own wasn't happening, either. Maybe it could even be a good thing—they were low on medical supplies, and Hunter could restock them on the necessities after he and Clint went AWOL.

"Sure thing," he said.

"Then let's move. The Pocket's landing in ten minutes, so make sure everything you need is taken care of."

Most of them scattered towards their rooms, but Sam headed straight for the atrium, where Bruce sat, hands pressed to the silver entrance of the Pocket. The physicist looked at him and nodded, but didn't say anything. Sam folded his arms and stared around the room, forcing his nerves to steady. He wished he could take Cap's shield out of the pack, run his fingers around the edges, but Clint had stitched it into the structure of the bag itself, somehow disguising the distinctive shape so that it looked like part of an overly-stuffed traveler's rucksack. He'd told Sam that he had lots of experience smuggling contraband, and went suspiciously quiet when Sam asked if it had all been for SHIELD.

Minute by minute, the others trickled in. Pepper and the Asgardians stood to one side, talking quietly while Pepper set up the suit's pieces, and checked the radio signal on her bracelets that would call the armor to her. Hunter slouched against one wall, staring at the ceiling. Trip and Jemma came in with three minutes to go. Judging by the lipstick on Trip's cheek, they'd already said good-bye, but they still held hands as they looked at the silver shimmer.

Clint came in with just under a minute to spare, dressed in plainclothes—no doubt with body armor underneath, like the rest of them—with no sign of his usual bow and arrows. His face was set just a little too firmly.

"Saying good-bye to Laura?" Sam asked before anyone else could. Clint didn't answer, just pulled the mask over his face; it made him look a good fifteen years older, with darker eyes and a wider nose. Sam was pretty sure the way the new face looked like it couldn't smile came from Clint, not the disguise.

"Everyone team up," Pepper ordered. "Bruce, take us down."

Sam gave one last glance around the group. He hoped they would make it without him and Clint. Hoped they would take care of Laura. He saw Clint eyeing the door back to his wife, and wondered again if leaving was the right thing to do. But the silver turned to mist, and then a snowy stone street, and Pepper's team filed out, one by one. The hospital team stood and waited a full three minutes after they left, as planned, before Sam looked at his watch and nodded.

"Good luck," Bruce said as they passed him. "Make sure nobody dies out there."

Sam had forgotten how _cold_ the real world could be. They'd bundled up a little, but he was used to the climate-controlled Pocket by now; his breath puffed in front of him in little clouds, like he'd been turned into a dragon.

Hunter took the lead as they trotted down empty alleys and narrow, cobblestoned streets. Sam followed, sharing a glance with Hawkeye as he did. They needed a way to shake their companion.

"This way," Hunter said out of the blue. Instead of turning west like they were supposed to, he took a left turn and headed uphill.

"Hey man," Sam muttered. "This isn't the way you laid out on the map. Hospital's still three blocks the other direction."

"I know." Hunter was walking faster now—still not enough that he would attract attention, but with more of a purpose to his step. "We're not going to the hospital."

"Then where?" Clint asked. But Sam had already worked it out, lining it up against the map Hunter had drawn, looking up at the hulking stone fortress at the top of the hill they'd started to climb.

"The base? You're leading us to the HYDRA base?"

The instant the words left his mouth, Clint grabbed Hunter by the shoulder and steered him into an alcove on the side of one of the streets.

"What the hell is this?"

"Fighting back." Hunter glanced between them, and must have noticed Sam's hand under his jacket, holding his gun, while Clint had only tightened his grip on the mercenary's shoulder. "I know you both have been looking for a way to fight HYDRA. That you were torn over whether or not you could make yourselves leave. Consider this mission an answer to your prayers."

"Is this 'mission' about your source in HYDRA?" Sam asked.

"His _what?"_

Sam had forgotten that Clint had been holed up, with Sam and Laura as his only source of gossip, for the past two weeks. "Hunter's in contact with a woman who's inside HYDRA, passing him information. She was in danger on their last raid two weeks ago, but he refuses to talk about it or her. Won't even tell Pepper who she is."

"She got in touch with me on that raid two weeks ago. Found out some information on HYDRA's evil twins that she thinks could help us beat them, but needs more intel. She asked me to dig into their pasts."

"That's why you pushed for Sokovia," Sam realized. "You figure information on the Maximoff twins will be here. In the HYDRA base where they were created."

"And it's why I wanted you on my team, Wilson. If anyone knows information on the Winter Soldier's origins, it's you. Figured we could throw that in as a bonus."

Sam and Hawkeye traded looks. Hunter waited for a minute, but then shifted, getting impatient.

"Look, this is exactly what the two of you were looking for. Work with me on this, get the information out quietly, and we have a way to fight HYDRA without either of you two having to go rogue. But I need your skills, because there's no way I can infiltrate the place on my own."

Clint slowly let go, and Hunter rolled his shoulders. "That a 'yes,' then?"

"One more question," Sam said. "How did you know what we were planning?"

"Please," Hunter snorted. "You don't think I was _actually_ asleep all the times you went to train, do you? No one really snores that loud."

Sam gave him a disbelieving stare. Hunter grinned. "Well, I hope you two have a bright idea for getting inside. Place looks like a tough nut to crack."

"I have an idea," Clint said softly, watching the people going in and out of the fortress. "I just don't think you're going to like it much."

* * *

"This sucks," Sam muttered through gritted teeth as he held on for dear life. The truck jolted, and he nearly smacked his head against the pavement—there wasn't a lot of clearance between the undercarriage and the ground. He had to keep his shoulders hunched to keep the bag off the ground, as if they didn't have enough strain on them already.

HYDRA hadn't exactly gone for subtle with its fortress. Sokovia was a largely failed state, with most of its grand, medieval buildings torn down or falling apart. HYDRA had poured money into it during the takeover, restructuring and modernizing, but the fortress—their base in Eastern Europe—remained old and intact, the most impressive part of the city.

If Sam had been attacking at the head of an army, the place's natural defenses would have been formidable. A steep, zigzagging path led uphill to large, wooden gates, re-enforced with modern technology. The wall was sheer, and dotted with windows easy to shoot from, but too small to crawl through until you were at least five stories off the ground. Not to mention the new defenses that had been added—Sam recognized the generators off to one side as prototypes he'd seen back in his Air Force days, meant to create an energy shield that could fend off both aerial and ground attacks.

They never would have gotten in with a frontal assault, which was why they hadn't tried. Instead he clung, upside down, to the bottom of the supply truck entering the courtyard. The ground passed less than three inches under his pack—more like half an inch with the way they shook over the cobblestones—and he prayed to God that there weren't any large rocks coming up. He'd already gotten a couple of snow drifts in his face.

The truck at the head of the caravan stopped, and then Sam's did too. He hung on grimly, his knuckles white from effort. If he tilted his chin up, just a little, he could see the edge of Clint's foot on the undercarriage of the truck in front of him.

Soldiers milled around, interrogating the drivers, checking the cabs, and then crawling through the back and kicking around the supply boxes to vet those, too. Good thing they hadn't gone with Hunter's original idea for sneaking in.

His arms were shaking by the time the guards stepped back and motioned the trucks in. Sam clung tight as his vehicle lurched forward again, crept past the gates, and then came to a stop inside the courtyard.

As softly as he could, he let himself drop onto the slushy rocks, then scooted towards Hawkeye's truck, knife in hand. The archer was hanging from his car by a rope harness they'd rigged up, a little too worried about his stamina to let him depend on pure body strength. Sam cut him loose and he landed gently on his back and nodded. He heard the last car park on the other side of them, and then a very quiet _whump_ as Hunter let go; a glance backwards showed the SHIELD agent rubbing his wrists.

Hawkeye was listening hard to the guards and drivers, unloading boxes from the truck beds. After a few seconds, he rolled out from under the car, joining them seamlessly. They'd watched everyone entering and leaving—plenty of nationalities, and plenty of people in plain clothes. Now that they'd made it past the gate, no one would glance at them twice. On his other side, Hunter took his chance, and pretty soon Sam heard the bawdy British accent cracking jokes. He closed his eyes.

 _Just like going undercover with Nat,_ he reminded himself. He swung out and climbed to his feet.

No one glanced at him twice. He grabbed a cardboard box of whatever-it-was being transported—lab equipment, maybe? It sounded like small, glass instruments clinking together—and followed the line of workers up the steps and into the fortress proper. The workers were dropping their cargo off in a large entrance hall; the architecture bore a strong resemblance to the Pocket, but far more crowded and cold. Nobody gave him a second look except a bored-looking lieutenant, who saw Sam looking around and motioned him over to the stack of boxes that were piling up in front of him.

Hunter sauntered up in his peripheral vision at that moment and pretended to help Sam set the box down. As they turned away, he tilted his head towards a corridor on the right and headed towards it. Sam followed, swiping a clipboard with the shipment's invoices from the stack of boxes as he went, and burying his face in the notes. It was a skill he'd learned from Natasha; you could get almost anywhere, even in a secure area, if you carried paperwork and looked busy.

Clint must have known the trick, too, because he had a binder of safety regulations in his hands when Sam and Hunter caught up. He gave Sam a wry smile. "I don't think they'll have any paper left by the time we're done."

"We have to be careful, you lot," Hunter said, looking less amused. "If anything tips them off, it could mean disaster for my source. It'll arouse suspicion if she gets contacted by a known compromised base."

"Relax. This stuff isn't classified or controlled. Papers like it go missing ten times in a day. The drivers will get yelled at, but it won't be suspicious," Clint said. "You still have that tech?"

Hunter nodded and pulled a flash drive from his pocket—the one Sam had seen him carrying when they picked him up in Chicago last week. "You won't believe what I had to do for this beauty. Get me onto a computer attached to the mainframe, and I can download anything on it that matches the keywords I've programmed in. No encryptions, nothing. Just honest answers."

Sam knew nothing of computers, but Clint looked impressed. He licked a finger and held it up as if testing the wind, then grinned at them and pointed left.

"How do you really know where we're going?" Sam asked as they climbed a set of stairs. Clint hadn't been to Sokovia before, much less the fortress—Pepper had asked before the raid.

"I don't," Clint said, his stroll as confident as if he was a sergeant inspecting troops. "But a room full of computer servers like their mainframe needs a lot of technical engineering requirements to keep from overheating, so it's narrowed down to the parts of the building with decent ventilation—larger windows, more spacious rooms, that kind of thing. From what I saw during recon, there are only a few places that will match the right architecture."

The area was becoming steadily more crowded with soldiers as they walked. A couple of HYDRA officers walked by, glaring at everyone, and they parted to the side with the rest of the workers to make room. All of a sudden, their disguise felt very thin—a clipboard, a mask, and pure guts. His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Hawkeye elbowed him and straightened his shoulders pointedly.

"One had an honest-to-God monocle," Hunter muttered after the officers passed and everyone started moving again. "I swear, I don't know how we missed these bastards."

"Standard SHIELD layout puts most of the technical rooms and labs close to the computer servers—it keeps all the nerds and tech in a close little area, where they can be defended in case of a security breach. We find them, we find our computers," Clint finished as if there had been no interruption, gesturing around them as they took another turn up another flight of stairs, and were suddenly in a hallway with more white coats and glasses than guns and fatigues. It was even colder in this area, if possible; Sam saw at least two people wearing brightly knit Jayne Cobb hats to stay warm.

"That's great," Hunter muttered as he glanced through some of the open doors into labs and workrooms. "But how are we supposed to get to their computers without sounding the alarm? We can't just waltz in and ask to use someone's computer."

"Why not?" Sam asked, an idea coming to mind. He remembered his time at the VA well enough—the kind of rundown equipment government employees were supposed to work with. He could only hope it was the same with HYDRA. "Follow my lead."

He picked a door at random and stepped smartly inside, Clint and Hunter at his heels. The room had one of the promised, large windows, was crowded with old-time machines and—like he'd hoped—double rows of computers. A couple people glanced up as they came in, eyebrows raised in question.

"IT division," Sam said in a bored voice. "We heard there was a computer malfunctioning."

"Finally," one scientist muttered; the 'evil HYDRA' identity was offset just a little by his thick French accent. He jerked a thumb over to the computer closest to the window. "That one's screen hasn't been working for three days. I've called six times, and all I can get are suggestions to turn it off and on again."

"We're on it," Sam said.

"Bloody genius, you are," Hunter muttered in his ear as they bent over the computer. He slid the flashdrive into place, then started tapping random keys. "How'd you know?"

"There's always at least one broken computer in a room with this many."

Clint, however, was looking around the room with his eyes narrowed. "There's more here than just computers. That wall on the left has some kind of air current coming from it—I can feel the draft."

Sam glanced at it. Now that Clint mentioned it, the stretch of wall _was_ suspiciously bare, with all the rest filled with metal shelving and lab equipment. A secret door? What secrets could HYDRA still be hiding now that they'd taken over? "Want to investigate?" he breathed.

He could feel Hawkeye itching to do it, but he slowly shook his head. "We need to focus on this. We're cutting our time close as it is. How's the work going?"

"Think we're almost there," Hunter muttered. The flashdrive blinked green, and he grinned. "There we go. Now we just have to get the computer working enough to send…"

There was a knock against the open door. Sam looked up and saw a woman with a giant cup of coffee and an MIT logo on her hoodie, and felt his heart sink. He knew what she would say before the words came out of her mouth.

"IT department. You needed a computer fixed?"

"Your friends are already here," the French scientist said. The woman looked at them and walked over, her brow furrowed, and Sam knew the game was up.

"Can I see your ID?"

"Shit," Clint muttered. Sam saw Hunter pocket the flashdrive.

"Just got shipped to this base, love," Hunter said with a brave attempt at a smile. "Badges will be issued after lunch. Although if you're free tonight, I'd _love_ to get to know the city and…"

It was a lost cause. Sam could see the suspicion in the rest of the room's faces, and then the woman's eyes fixed on him, a wanted associate of Captain American and Black Widow, and he saw it click.

Clint didn't hesitate. He lunged, grabbed the woman, and pulled her back towards the window. His mask went askew, flickering into weird patterns over his face; he ripped it off with one hand, while his other held a gun pointed at the woman's head. "No one sound the alarm."

"Great," the girl muttered. "Just great. A bunch of Avengers waltz into HYDRA with barely any disguise, and _I'm_ the only one smart enough to recognize them."

The hand with her coffee tensed, like she was about to throw it, and Sam eased it from her to set on one of the machines. On instinct, he found himself falling back into the good cop role he'd always had with Natasha. "Easy, there. As long as no one loses their heads, you'll make it home fine."

It wasn't her they should have been worried about, though. The French scientist, standing at the back of the huddled group of lab rats, suddenly spun around and made a break for it. Before Sam or even Hawkeye could react, he slammed his hand onto a red button by the door. Alarms blared.

"Shit!" Hawkeye shouted over the din. "Hunter, window. Sam, hold her."

Sam grabbed the tech girl and held her in an arm lock, while Hunter kicked out the window. He glanced over his shoulder at the drop and grimaced; they were at least five stories up, they'd need a miracle to make it out without dying. He turned to see Clint with a bow and arrow in hand, attaching something to the fletching.

 _"How_ did you hide that?"

Hawkeye was crazy, Sam decided again. He looked up from his arrow and gave a grin, voice raised to make it over the din. "Oh come on! Natasha fit an entire arsenal inside a catsuit, I can sneak a bow and arrow."

"Hilarious," Hunter shouted. "But maybe another time?"

"Right." Clint stepped onto the window ledge, arrow nocked. "Grab hold. Leave my arms free."

Sam shoved the IT girl back into the crowd, latched onto Hawkeye, and next second all three of them were falling, and there was the _twang_ of the bow's release. They plummeted in free fall, air whipping past them, and Sam had never missed his wings more—

And then it all stopped, not ten feet off the ground, the jolt so sudden Hunter lost his grip and dropped the rest of the way; he rolled to his feet and stared up at them. Clint had attached a line to the arrow and shot it into a crack in the stone wall. They hung from the end of the rope, him holding their combined weight.

It didn't last long, of course; even the Amazing Hawkeye couldn't take the weight. They dropped from the cable to the ground, Sam almost crushing Hunter on the way down. Hawkeye groaned, rolling his shoulders. "That was a lot easier when it was just me and Nat."

Sam looked around. They had jumped from the wall that faced outside the city, snow covered forest beginning a few feet away. There was a hum just to his left; on instinct he grabbed the other two and sprang forward. A few seconds later, the energy shields he'd seen earlier sprang up behind them, wrapping the fortress in a net of glowing lines. If they'd been any later, they would have been trapped inside.

But as he turned to look, he saw turrets of guns and lines of soldiers forming up through the woods. He ripped the bag off his shoulders and ripped the shield free, then turned to look Clint and Hunter, their faces gone pale. Clint grabbed another arrow from somewhere and strung it, face set.

"Run!"

* * *

 **A** **uthor's Note:** Dun dun DUN.

Hopefully y'all liked it; I had to do some weird editing to get all the future seeds sown into this chapter (there's at least one Chekov's gun hidden here). A quick housekeeping note: I plan to update on Tuesday afternoon or evening, hopefully every week (every two at the most), for the next month or so. This is the first story where I'm still writing as I post, so I'm trying to keep up a schedule with it.

Thanks to all those who read, alert/favorite, and especially review! It means the world to hear from people reading this runaway idea.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6.

The gun turret went up in a blaze of fire, hit by an explosive arrow. Clint snapped his hand against the top limb of his bow, and it collapsed into a small bundle—out of arrows. "This way!"

They sprinted for the opening he'd made, gunfire just behind them. Sam risked a glance at the pursuit and ran the odds in his head; three guns between them, half a dozen clips each, and more HYDRA agents closing in than he cared to count. "Get in and get out quietly" was blown to hell, now he just wanted them all to get out. He grabbed the digital watch on his wrist, and pressed the button sequence Jemma had showed him.

"Rescue!" he shouted, using Pepper's code name. "Rescue come in!"

"Falcon?" Pepper asked. "What's your status?"

"Mayday!" To his side, Hunter turned, firing on the soldiers behind them. His aim was excellent, one shot for each soldier, and it still wouldn't nearly be enough. "Lock onto my GPS, we've got the whole HYDRA base after us."

"ETA three minutes. Head east if you can."

"Roger that." Sam grabbed Hunter and pulled him in that direction. They would be in the path of another machine gun set, but Clint had pulled his gun out now, aiming at the soldier whose head peeked just above the metal shield. Fifty feet, pistol, only a few inches of exposed target, while moving. A month ago, Sam would have scoffed at the idea of _anyone_ making that shot. Now, he put his head down and ran, knowing the gunner was as good as dead.

The yells of the soldiers seemed to be getting a little farther behind them, and their firing stopped. Sam wanted to believe that it was because they were outpacing the pursuit, but he knew better than to count on good luck. Gun drawn, he took another look back.

There was a single soldier out ahead of the others, his long stride eating up ground. He was covered head to toe in heavy body armor and couldn't have left his companions behind more than thirty seconds ago, but he was already halfway through the gap between HYDRA and them. Sam didn't know what he was, but the churning in his gut was one he'd come to trust.

"Trouble incoming!"

"Here." Hunter dodged behind a large tree, big enough to provide cover to all of them. They dove in behind him and opened fire.

The soldier staggered back at the initial burst but, incredibly, didn't fall over. Sam fired again, _saw_ his bullets make an impact on the armor, but the soldier powered through and didn't even pause at the impact.

It was impossible. Even in Kevlar, getting hit like that was a gut punch at best, and Hawkeye's headshots should have the guy concussed even with a helmet. But he kept charging, getting closer, close enough that Sam could see the black muzzle and a clear face shield, dented with Hawkeye's bullets. See the rabid look in his eyes, a look he'd seen once before, on the Winter Soldier—only Barnes had looked tame compared to this one.

 _HYDRA made more Winter Soldiers,_ he realized with a thrill of fear. Stronger than Barnes, faster, and even less controlled.

There was no stopping someone like this. The most Sam could do was slow him down.

"Get out of here!" he bellowed to Clint and Hunter and, not letting himself think, not letting himself feel fear, he threw himself forward, reloading and emptying another clip on pure muscle memory.

He kept firing, hoping a shot would get lucky, but the Soldier just kept coming, even when Sam hit him at point blank range, and then the Soldier grabbed his hand, twisting, and the gun went flying. Sam brought the shield on his other arm down _hard_ on his wrist, and the Soldier let go.

Cap's shield saved his life. Without it, Sam would have been smashed in minutes; as it was, he blocked the Soldier's punches, deflected a kick, then saw his opening and smashed the shield against the Soldier's shoulder.

He had a brief view of the arm dangling at the wrong angle, and then what felt like a truck slammed into his side.

Sam heard ribs snap, felt himself go airborne, then landed back on the ground. What air had been in his lungs was gone, and he couldn't get it back in. A feint. The Soldier had let Sam break his arm to get an opening.

Stunned, unable to think, he rolled his head to the side. Through the haze and panic, there was just enough sense to bring the shield up to cover his chest as the Soldier stalked up to him. He planted a heavy boot over the star and ground down. The edges of the shield dug into Sam's collarbone, his stomach. His body armor spared him the worst of it, but Sam swore he could feel the bones of his shattered lower ribs splinter against each other. He dragged his hand up to the Soldier's boot, trying to push him off, but ended up grasping his ankle, like he was begging for mercy. Screw that. The Soldier at last pulled his gun—

A beam of white light tossed him ten feet backward. The snow next to Sam's head melted and he felt a wave of heat across his face as the repulsers lowered Rescue to the ground. She stood over him, hands raised against the Soldier. He stayed down, a heap of collapsed body armor; looked like they'd found something that could hit him.

"Get to the top of the ridge," she ordered. "Pocket lands in thirty seconds."

The sound of running soldiers caught her attention, and she lifted off again, blasters cutting huge swaths through the HYDRA lines. Sam tried to stand, tried to breathe, but no matter how fast he gasped, he couldn't fill his lungs, was going to choke right there in the snow.

Someone grabbed his arm and hauled him up. Sam tried to speak, but it was mostly a choked wheeze, and he found himself half draped across Hawkeye's shoulder.

"Get his other arm!" Clint snapped. Hunter ran up on his other side, ducking under the shield still attached to Sam's arm, and they dragged him forward, towards the top of the ridge. Sam tried to get his legs under him and support himself, but he couldn't get enough air, and felt himself spasm in their grip.

The cool, watery surface of the Pocket passed over his skin, and then Sam felt warm air on his face. Thin fingers grabbed his chin, and he found himself staring at Jemma.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Enhanced soldier punched him," Hunter said. "Square in the—"

Hunter's support vanished. Clint spun, trying to keep Sam from falling, and he saw images through the haze that made no sense:

The Soldier on the ground, an arm raised, holding a gun…

Rescue flying at the Soldier, blasting him again and again, until there was nothing left but a hole in the ground…

Hunter, on the floor, holding his bloody stomach.

There was a split second as everyone stared, shocked, unable to process it, and then Jemma shook herself.

"Get them to the infirmary!" she shouted, and Sam felt himself being dragged again. Behind him, he heard her still barking orders. "Barton, I need you on Wilson. Wong, pilot. Bruce, get Hunter—"

Clint hauled Sam to the med bay, now equipped with two tables, blue lights hovering above both them, and draped Sam across the first one. He ran to the supply cabinet, knocking off a box of bandages as he searched for something, then came charging back with a pair of shears. He cut Sam's clothes free and stripped the body armor off him while Trip took his vitals.

 _Blunt chest trauma,_ Sam remembered, paramedic training drilled so deep into his head that it stuck even when he was gasping like a fish out of water, even when he couldn't get the image of Hunter's bloody stomach out of his head. _Tachypnea._ He raised his free hand and felt his throat. _Tracheal deviation._ He recognized this. _Pneumothorax._ A collapsed lung, with trapped air filling the space behind his ribs and pushing the lung out of the way, forcing it to compress against his heart and blood vessels. He'd treated this twice, back in Afghanistan. Had to let the air out.

Trip was at his side, wrapping a tourniquet around his arm to start the IV, and Sam finally flicked the shield free so he could grab the needle from him.

"Sam? Sam!"

 _This is going to suck._

Sam stabbed the needle straight into his chest.

Air, blessed, sweet air, flowed into his chest as his lung expanded. He sucked in the deepest breath he could, his lung _aching_ as it ballooned out.

Jemma had just walked in with the others, and stopped to stare at him. Hard to blame her—he had just stabbed himself—but she had a job to do. He jabbed his finger at the other table.

"Hunter!" he gasped out.

"Right!" She darted away, dragging Trip with her. Sam relaxed against the table, breathing slowly, and _God_ he'd never realized how good that felt, air whistling down his throat. His chest hurt like hell, there was a needle sticking between his ribs, and he knew he was lucky his shield and armor had been there—probably would have gotten an entire chest full of blood if it hadn't—but he had oxygen again.

The table next to him was full of commotion. Jemma was at the head of the bed, a note of command to her that Sam had never heard before.

"Alright, everyone, GSW to the upper abdomen with no exit wound and decreasing blood pressure. Bruce, you're on airway. Trip, IV-O-2-monitor and then fluids and 'pressors. Heimdall, locate the bullet and trajectory with the Forge's—"

"Wait," Pepper ordered. "Don't knock him out yet."

"We don't have time to wait, he's literally dying in front of us! We have to—"

"Give me thirty seconds. Get everything else ready." Pepper didn't look to see if her orders were obeyed; her armored hand reached out and gripped Hunter by the chin. "Hunter. Hunter, I need you to focus."

Sam couldn't see him through the crowd of people around the bed, but he must have had his airway intact, because there was a gasping, soft, "M-Marm?"

"Your source, Hunter. I need a name."

"Wasp. She's a-a wasp."

"Great!" Clint said. "He's delirious—"

"Contact. Hunter, how do I reach her?"

"List of-of email addresses. My room. We…"

He fell silent and one of the lights above him flashed green. Jemma looked up at it and went white.

"Everyone get to work! _"_

Her words set off a whirlwind of movement, too much confusion for Sam to keep track. He heard Jemma call for blood and get told they were down to their last two units. Saw Bruce slide the tube into his throat at about the same time as they lost a heartbeat.

Clint and then Heimdall tag teamed the CPR, almost jumping with the force they put into their compressions. Pepper zapped him again and again until they finally got a weak pulse back. Trip put their last blood and then liters of saline through his IV just to give Hunter's veins _something_ to fill them. Whatever the Forge was, it showed Jemma the trajectory of the bullet, and she cut into Hunter's stomach to get to the opened vessels, frantically stitching bleed after bleed.

Ten of the longest and shortest minutes of his life passed. The heart rhythms got worse, then disappeared again no matter how many rounds of epi were delivered. Sam knew what that meant, and Jemma did, too. She looked around the team.

"I don't think anything we do at this point is going to save him. Does anyone object to stopping?"

"We can't!" Pepper snapped. "I'm _not_ losing another man."

And so they kept going. Fifteen minutes. Bruce ran for the rib spreader and Sam was suddenly glad the people crowding the table blocked his view. The team really was going for broke.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty-five. Jemma looked at Pepper again.

"Ma'am, I am literally holding his heart in my hands and compressing it myself. We are out of blood, adrenaline, and options. And if, by some miracle, he came back, he would have massive brain damage from lack of oxygen, dysfunctional intestines, and likely raging infections throughout his abdomen. Do you still want me to continue?"

Pepper was still fully suited, her head bent. "No," she said. "You're right. We need to be realistic."

"Then I'm calling it." Jemma looked around the team. "We're done here."

No matter how many times he'd seen it before, it always startled Sam how all the chaos of a code stopped at once. Just like that, everyone at the table put down their tools and backed off. Jemma stepped back, looking like an extra out of a horror movie she had so much blood on her, and peeled off her gloves, mask, and gown. She had tears in her eyes. Pepper put a hand on her shoulder.

"Take care of Sam. Everyone else, go clean up."

Clint paused, and rummaged through the discarded shreds of Hunter's clothes. After a minute, he pulled out the flashdrive they had fought for.

"I'll explain later," he murmured to the group, and walked out. One by one, the others followed him.

"Mr. Wilson." Jemma gave him a sad attempt at a smile as she looked at the needle sticking out of his ribs. "You are full of surprises."

"I told you. I was a paramedic."

"Mmm. Pneumothorax, I presume?"

"Yeah."

She ran through the trauma assessment, the routine seeming to calm her as she checked over him. After a couple of minutes, she stepped back, and said in a clear voice: "Scan."

Lines of golden fire sprang up above him, dancing and coalescing into the shape of a human body—his. He could see his heart beating inside, the lines of his bones, his intestines pulsing and shifting.

"Is that…"

"Asgardians call it a Soul Forge," Jemma said, manipulating the image with her fingers to zoom in on certain parts of his body. Her smile was genuine this time. "Far more accurate than a CT, and without any of the radiation. Here."

She pointed to his right lung, where the pneumothorax had been. His lung was a little better, but it was far from complete re-expansion.

"You know what comes next," Jemma said. "I'll need to put a tube between your ribs and drain it."

"Great." Sounded even worse than stabbing himself.

"Don't worry, you're stable enough for me to sedate you first. Just let me go wash, and then I'll get everything ready."

Sam winced as his last breath went a little _too_ deep and jostled the needle. "Uh… maybe some morphine, first?"

"Just a little. You already have enough trouble breathing." She drew up half of a vial and sent it through his IV, then left. Sam stared up at the ceiling, felt his mind cloud with the drug, then turned to look at Hunter's body.

He'd expected it to look bad, but nothing quite prepared you for seeing your friend cut up on a table. The tube was still sticking from his mouth, and his ribs were purpled and broken from the CPR, needles drilled into his shins because they hadn't been able to get an IV, a jagged line down his stomach. He was on the wrong side to see the thoracotomy—the cut they'd made in his chest—and he was grateful.

What he hadn't expected was for Pepper to still be there, standing over Hunter like a sentinel. She must not have moved at all to be so silent in the clanking armor. But, as if she sensed Sam's gaze, she shook herself and started working, sweeping up the scattered needles and bottles and packaging. Collecting the clamps and metal equipment for reuse. Then, she finally pressed the release on the armor, so that it peeled partway back from her, leaving her hands and face free. She grabbed a curved needle the size of a fishhook attached to equally thick thread, and walked around to Hunter's other side. It was only when she started closing up the gash that she acknowledged Sam's stare.

"You should let the morphine work," she told him. Her voice was neutral, her face blank with focus.

"It's not your fault," Sam said.

"I delayed vital medical care to get information. I have to live with that."

"He wasn't going to make it no matter what. You were there. The bullet rocketed through his intestines and into his chest, and we had no blood. You got the information we'll need to survive. Just like you put your life on the line to save me and Clint. Again."

Her expression thawed, and her needle stilled. For the first time, Sam thought he was seeing Pepper the person, and not Pepper the leader. Someone who had been forced into a role she never wanted, and who had made herself strong even while the world had broken around her.

"I can't lose any more people, Sam," she whispered. "I'm supposed to protect all of you, but I'm not Tony or Steve. I keep messing up, and you all pay the consequences when I do. Hunter…"

"Don't play that game." It hurt to talk, the shortness of breath slowly coming back as he kept going, but Sam had to get the words out. "Hunter made his decision to put his life at risk. We all did. Your orders would have kept us all safe, and we went against them. If anyone's to blame, it's Clint and me."

She let out a slow breath and started sewing again. Sam couldn't tell if his words had really helped or if she just masked her emotions.

"It's not your fault either, you know," she said. "I found the note Clint left for us. I know you planned to desert, but there was nothing about a raid into Sokovia's fortress. I'm betting Hunter sprang the new plan on you and you felt you couldn't say no."

Sam flinched. Pepper didn't look up, but she somehow noticed anyway. "That can wait, though. Rest for now. Let Jemma work her magic."

Jemma came back at that moment, so on-cue that Sam wondered how long she'd been listening for a safe time to come in. She gave Pepper a questioning look, and cleared her throat. "Do you need any help?"

"I'm done. His body is as ready as it's going to get. I need to go."

"Go? Where?"

"To find that list and figure out how to get in touch with this 'wasp.' And then Clint and I are going to land somewhere and send off the information Hunter died for." She glanced over at Sam. "I assume that's what's on the flash drive he grabbed?"

Sam nodded.

"Then there's no time to lose."

She got up to leave, and Sam grabbed her arm as she walked past. "Wait." He couldn't just let her leave thinking it was her fault, that she was somehow responsible for his stupidity, for Clint's mistakes.

Pepper looked down at him and seemed to guess what he was thinking. "Don't worry about me, Sam. Just let yourself recover."

* * *

Pepper and Clint were back before the sedation wore off. Clint came by and told him, in a hollow, cold voice that said he was processing his own grief and guilt, that everything had gone smoothly. They had found a rotating list of email addresses and passwords Hunter used to contact his "wasp," and sent the information from a public library, disguised to look like spam. They wouldn't know if it worked until she contacted them back, but no one had died that time. That now counted as a victory.

They held the funeral the next day. Bruce wheeled Sam to the atrium, where the entire group stood, forming a half-circle around the silvery entrance, Hunter's body laying in front of it. Going by the expressionless faces, it seemed like most of the others were still as in shock as he was.

Pepper said a few words—things about honoring Hunter, how much he'd meant to all of them, the sorts of platitudes you always said at funerals. Trip, Hunter's fellow SHIELD agent, and the one who had known him longest, stepped forward with funny anecdotes.

Things only really changed from your standard funeral when it came time to lay his body to rest. Sam expected Wong, their pilot for the day, to take them somewhere deserted where they could bury him. Instead, as Trip and Heimdall carried Hunter's sheet-wrapped corpse to the entrance, it stayed reflective. Careful not to touch the surface, they slid him through the silver, his body disappearing.

"What happens to things that go through there if we haven't landed?" he muttered to Bruce.

"It's all theoretical. But we're floating between realities—it should be like stepping into a black hole. His body will be… unmade."

 _Sure beats a plain old pine box,_ Sam thought, fighting a sudden, inappropriate smile. Hunter would have appreciated the humor, he was sure, but it wasn't the time for it now.

Things settled into a new routine. Sam stayed at the med bay for nearly a week, then moved back to his room, somehow getting _less_ sleep without Hunter's snoring. They made another raid a week later for desperately needed medical supplies. Pepper ignored his protests and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not medically cleared for action. Jemma went instead, Trip and Wong sticking close to her, while Clint and Pepper went to check on any response from Hunter's source.

Sam spent most of the time they were gone with Bruce—also rejected from the hospital raid because he was too recognizable—played thirty-seven games of arcade basketball, and tried not to think too hard about what injuries his friends might get, and how the hell he was supposed to treat them with no supplies if they did.

But everyone came back safely. Trip and Jemma were carrying what looked like half the hospital gift shop between them and giggling like kids with a crush—apparently they had turned the event into a date, and it was good to see light back in Jemma's eyes, if nothing else. Wong followed them with the actual supplies and a long-suffering expression.

Clint and Pepper returned an hour after, with no response yet from the source. Everyone tried to reassure themselves that she usually only contacted Hunter every three or four weeks, and it wasn't anything to worry about, but Pepper ordered them to make daily stops to check from there on out.

Jemma _finally_ said he was fit for duty a few days later, and Sam went back to working out, building up his strength. Clint joined him, silent, and if Sam pushed himself to run until he was falling over, and Clint punched the bags so hard one of them split open at the seams, well, there were worse ways to deal with a brother in arms' death.

Another week went by. Then two. Still no response from their 'wasp,' and Sam saw the hope start to fade from everyone's eyes, but no one wanted to say it. He wondered if the disaster in Sokovia had cost another life, someone they had never even met.

And then, more than a month after Hunter's death, Pepper and Heimdall returned to the Pocket in the middle of the night and called an emergency meeting.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** So, I totally went overboard with medical detail and trauma resuscitation. A few liberties were taken with the injuries and treatments, but I tried to keep the essence if nothing else. Hopefully y'all will forgive the indulgence! And... y'know, killing Hunter. Sorry about that.

As always, reviews are welcome!


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7.

 _It's weird how we always meet in the kitchen,_ Sam thought as he took one of the last empty spaces on the bench. It wasn't like anyone had announced where they were gathering; everyone had just congregated there. Some of the VA psychologists would have said it symbolized something deep in their subconscious—that a kitchen was a safe haven, or that it represented family and nourishment, warmth and normalcy. He knew at least one that would have associated it with motherhood, and slipped straight into Freud from there. Sam snorted at the thought.

 _Or maybe it's the only room in the Pocket with a table big enough to seat everyone._ He'd never put much stock in the academic side of psychology.

Despite the early hour and half of them still in their pajamas, everyone looked wide awake. Trip had started coffee and passed it around while they waited for Pepper, and Clint left briefly, only to return with an armful of blankets—the normally climate controlled Pocket had begun to feel cold, although Sam couldn't tell if it was just the late hour or a real change in temperature.

Pepper and Heimdall came in just in time to accept their coffee. She wore a long sleeved shirt under her too-big Black Sabbath tee, and there was frost on the faces of her and Heimdall's watches. Bruce, who was supposed to be steering the Pocket, followed after them, snow melting in his black hair. Pepper noticed the curious looks as she took a seat.

"We've deadened anything that gives off a signal and let the Pocket sit in a deserted part in the foothills of the Himalayas. It's a risk, but I think everyone needs to be here for this discussion." She hesitated, and took a sip of coffee. "Wasp contacted us last night."

"That's good news, right?" Jemma asked.

"Depends on what she has to say," Trip said, grimacing at the expression on Pepper's face. "I'm guessing it wasn't to tell us HYDRA's decided to surrender and give everyone a free pony."

Pepper nodded. "It was a distress signal. HYDRA's realized her charade, and she's on the run. She asked us to get her out in the next five hours or she's going to have to make it on her own. She doesn't think she'll last long if she does that."

"So we need to figure out how we're going to extract her," Sam said. "And we need to be ready in just a few hours." It would be risky. Normally, even the most ho-hum of food raids got at least a day of planning.

"No." Heimdall said. His burning, gold eyes swept the table, never settling on any of them, but somehow making Sam feel as if he'd been seen straight through. "We first must decide if we will rescue this woman."

"' _If_ we—'" Clint looked just as startled as Sam felt. "How can we _not?_ She's in danger because she's trying to help us. We can't leave a man behind."

"It's not that simple," Bruce said quietly. "With this little warning, if we mount a rescue mission, we have to bring the Pocket straight to them, and be ready for a full scale battle. If we lose…"

"We die," Clint said. "But so what? We've been risking our lives for each other for months now. She's one of us, she deserves the same."

"And I'd risk it if it was just our lives. But if it goes south, HYDRA gets their hands on the Pocket, on the Rescue suit, and on—on the Big Guy. Once they find a way to control that tech we'll solidify their rule even further and wipe out the last of the Resistance. Is the life of one person—even one of us—worth that risk?"

"Natasha thought so."

Bruce flinched and closed his eyes. "Natasha's not here. I wish she was."

Silence fell around the table. Sam stared down at his coffee before he downed the last of it.

"It's not just one life versus thousands, though," he said. "There's also whatever she's got on HYDRA."

Seven pairs of eyes turned to look at him, most of them startled.

"The reason we went off-script in Sokovia was because she contacted Hunter asking for the pasts of HYDRA's enhanced humans—Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver," he explained. Had he and Clint never talked about that with everyone? He must have been in the infirmary and figured everyone else had been told by the time he was released. "She knew the risk that would mean for him, and thought she was onto something important enough that she wanted Hunter to take it anyway. If she's found it, if we can rescue her, if it really is as important as she'd hoped…"

"That's a lot of 'ifs,' man," Trip said. Sam nodded.

"Yeah, but there's only one that matters. _If_ this is a chance to fight HYDRA—really fight them, with a shot at winning—we have to take it." He turned to Pepper. "That's what you said to me, back when I first came here. That you changed your mission to 'survive' instead of 'fight' because there wasn't a choice. Now there is."

"Is there?" Bruce said. "Even you've got to admit, that's thin. Think of how many people are already dead. They all died so we could live. I don't want that sacrifice to be for nothing."

Pepper met Sam's eyes, and even though her face was serene now, it was as if he was seeing her again in the medical bay, when she cleaned and stitched Hunter's corpse. Hopeless, helpless, watching them all die around her and feeling every death as another weight on her shoulders. He was asking her to do the impossible. To stand and fight when it took everything she had just to shoulder the burden she carried.

She fiddled with the metal bracelets on her wrist, the ones that would call Tony's suit to her.

"It wasn't for nothing," she whispered at last. "And it wasn't just so we could live. Natasha, Thor and Jane, Steve, Hunter. Tony. They didn't die for us to scrape by, hiding and afraid, picked off one by one. They died so that we could have a chance to win. So we could continue their fight. Their deaths will be for nothing if we don't do that."

The hard, tenacious seed of hope Sam had been hanging onto for so long blossomed and spread through his chest. He swallowed.

"So we fight?" Heimdall asked.

Pepper started to nod, then hesitated. "The Pocket is supposed to be a sanctuary, not another rebellion. If we decide to change that, it has to be unanimous. I'll fight, but if anyone is unwilling, I'll step down and leave the Pocket for them to command."

"I'm in," Sam said immediately. "I guess you all knew where I stand already, but I'm going to fight for this."

"As will I," Wong said. He'd been so silent Sam had almost forgotten he was present. "For Kamar-Taj, my home."

"Clint?" Pepper asked. "I know what you're going to say for yourself, but I need you to stop and think for a second. You're also speaking for your wife, and what she would want, even if it disagrees with you."

He didn't hesitate. "Laura sacrificed herself to build a better future for our kids. She would expect nothing less from me."

Trip and Jemma had their heads together, whispering. Finally, Jemma nodded and scooted her chair closer to his, so that he could wrap an arm around her. "I'm fighting," Trip said. "SHIELD used to stand for something. Even if I'm the only one left, I'm going to make sure we still do."

He turned to Jemma, who had dug out a handkerchief to dab at her eyes, and his voice was quiet. "You don't have to do this."

"Nonsense. We're a team," she said. "And we were both SHIELD. It stands for something, and we both stand behind it."

There was only two person left, Heimdall and Bruce, and as they all realized it, people started to sneak looks across the table, then stare openly. Dr. Banner had his hands drawn up in front of his chin, as if he was praying, while Heimdall's strange golden eyes stared far beyond the walls of the Pocket, lost in some thought or memory. Sam suddenly wished he'd had more time to talk with the Asgardian to understand how his mind worked. Even Wong, silent though he was, he felt like he had a little bit of a read on; with Heimdall, he'd never had the chance.

But maybe that wouldn't have changed anything. Everyone at the table seemed to be watching him with uncertainty, including Wong and Pepper, the people he'd seen with Heimdall the most.

"I have watched kingdoms rise and fall," Heimdall said at last. "I have seen them slaughter innocents, take power, hurt those they are charged to protect. HYDRA is nothing new, although it is powerful. But for the first time I have a duty to fight them, rather than to watch. I will not desert that now."

Silence fell. Pepper took a deep breath, and turned to Bruce. He still hadn't moved.

"There's no shame in saying 'no,' Bruce. You risk more than any of us. Clint will probably take it as a favor if you drop us off from the Pocket, then leave with it and protect Laura."

He opened his eyes, and Sam almost wished he hadn't. There was a hunted, desperate look in them.

"I'm not going to abandon everyone here and keep the Pocket for myself. If everyone here wants to fight, they should. But I won't—I can't. I won't have another bombed city on my conscience. Won't risk their Witch turning me into…" His fist clenched and unclenched on the table, like he was looking for something to grasp. "Don't ask me to sacrifice thousands of innocent lives to protect the people I love. To risk letting the Big Guy become HYDRA's fist. I can't make that call."

Clint, of all people, looked sympathetic. "I get it," he said. "Mind control's tough to shake. That doesn't mean you have to sit out entirely, though. We'll need someone to hold the Pocket, guard our escape. If that's you, it frees up one more person to fight. And Pepper's right—if everything goes wrong, I'd appreciate you taking the Pocket and Laura and getting the hell out of there."

The tension left Bruce's shoulders at that. He looked at Pepper for confirmation, and when she nodded, sighed. "I can do that."

"Then let's get to work," Pepper said. "We've got four and a half hours to plot a rescue, fight off HYDRA, and get Wasp out."

"Where'd she go to ground?" Trip asked.

Pepper smiled and twisted one of the bracelets in an odd pattern. "She didn't. She went up in the air."

A handful of metal pieces zoomed through the air to her, forming the gauntlet from her suit. She set her hand, palm up, on the table; instead of sending out a repulsor blast, the light in the center of her hand shifted and formed a hologram showing the schematics of…

"HYDRA's flagship," Sam said. "She's hiding aboard HYDRA's flagship."

* * *

"So… that's it?" Trip asked, staring dubiously at the display of the carrier. "We just… teleport into the center of the ship, guns blazing, and hope Wasp comes to us?"

Pepper spread her hands, the hologram swinging through the air as it followed her gauntlet. "If anyone else has a better idea, please speak up. HYDRA's expecting us, and we don't know where Wasp is, or even _who_ she is. Making as much noise as we can and letting her find us is the best I can offer. And we'll be at the central computer terminal, so Jemma can find out if she tries to contact us electronically, or if she's been captured and held in the cells. If she's being held, the cells are only two decks below us. We can blast our way straight through the floor to her."

Jemma bit her lip and nodded. Pepper had overridden her fears about lack of hacking skills by giving her Hunter's flashdrive and some tech from the suit, but she still looked uncertain. Not that everyone else seemed thrilled with the plan. There were too many variables.

"There is one other thing we should think about," Clint said. "Yeah, Wasp is the priority, but if we're raiding HYDRA's lead ship, we shouldn't pass up the chance to destroy it. I've tried it before, and the only thing that stopped it going down was Iron Man and Cap—neither of them are here to help HYDRA this time.

"While Rescue and Heimdall make a lot of noise and draw everyone's eyes to pick up Wasp, a partner and I can slip over to the engine room and sabotage the whole thing. If our team evacuates through the Pocket, it will strand hundreds of HYDRA's best and brightest aboard a sinking ship."

"It will leave you and your partner stranded too," Pepper pointed out. "I'm not signing off on a suicide mission. The whole point is that we're not leaving someone behind."

Clint shrugged. "Doesn't have to be suicide. We name a rendezvous point, and as soon as everyone in the main group's out, the Pocket comes to pick us up."

"With the whole ship in freefall?" Bruce asked. "I'm going to have enough trouble landing the Pocket on a stable, moving helicarrier. The whole thing is going to be spinning and collapsing on itself once you take the engines out, and I'll have no idea where you are. If we have a rendezvous point, _maybe,_ but even then—"

"It's worth the risk. Even if it _was_ a surefire death, it'd be worth it. The chance for a rescue is just a bonus."

Pepper's mouth tightened at that, and Sam could tell she was reminding herself that she'd already committed to gambling their lives. "Do you have a partner in mind?"

Her tone said that she already knew the answer, and sure enough, Clint turned to Sam, eyebrows raised.

"Hell yes," Sam said.

Pepper hesitated, and looked at Heimdall. She had the final say, but he was the best strategist and one of the top fighters there; most of their battle plans went through him. He nodded thoughtfully. "We five can ward off HYDRA long enough in such an enclosed space. And friend Barton is right that the strategic importance of the carrier is worth a significant risk."

"Fine." Pepper said. "Against my better judgment, I'll agree. Bruce will set you somewhere obscure before we attack; that will be where we'll try to collect you, too. Does anyone else have something to contribute?"

Everyone shook their heads, and Pepper nodded. "Be ready in half an hour."

* * *

For someone who'd volunteered for the post-apocalyptic equivalent of _Saving Private Ryan_ , Hawkeye sure seemed happier than Sam had seen him since Natasha's death.

It was the Avengers suit, he decided. Close enough to the SHIELD—now HYDRA—uniform that he wouldn't be marked right away, a full quiver of arrows only barely hidden under a jacket, collapsible bow along with his firearm. He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, the adrenaline of a good fight already running strong. No matter what he claimed, he had missed being an Avenger.

Bruce, meanwhile, was handing a pair of red goggles to Sam.

"It's not your wings. Tony was the one who could MacGyver something like that from the parts we have. But the glasses will give you the layout of the carrier, tech readouts on the engine parts, and zoom in if you're trying to focus on something small—a lot of microtechnology goes into those machines, and this will let you see what you're doing."

"Make me a real Falcon," Sam grinned.

They were all gathered in the Atrium, everyone armored and bristling with weapons, shivering in the cold that leaked through from the Himalayas. Pepper gave him a few minutes to fiddle with the glasses and check his guns and shield for the last time. Once he nodded at her, she turned to face Bruce.

"Whenever you're ready."

The Pocket shimmered silver, and then a fogged image of a cramped supply closet appeared, so small that Sam had to reach through and open the door before he let the rest of himself out. He emerged from the Pocket and into a corridor of the Helicarrier almost before he thought about it, Clint right on his heels.

He swung his head around, marking their location down on a mental map, before pulling the closet door open again just to see. The Pocket was already gone, comms giving off a gentle static until the others came back into reality, and all that was in there were stacks of cleaning supplies.

"Like the wardrobe into Narnia," he muttered, closing the door and heading down the hall. It looked like something of the _Enterprise;_ all sleek stainless steel and glass rather than the spare, militaristic set-up he'd expected from his time on regular aircraft carriers. Clint was already at the maintenance door, and as soon as Sam joined him, they slipped inside.

The difference between the service corridor and the ones before it was immediate, and much closer to Sam's expectations. No open architecture designs here, just a lot of industrial gray, close walls, the floor a catwalk. This was the behind-the-scenes part of the ship, the places where visitors and VIPs like Fury and Steve never had reason to go—and where spies like Natasha and Clint thrived.

The engine room was straight ahead, and he and Clint headed for that. Once Pepper and the others attacked, the ship would be put on lockdown—they needed to be past the automated barriers and locks before HYDRA realized they were under attack.

There wasn't exactly much resistance. The engineers and mechanics had barely glanced up at them before Clint had one of them laid out flat; Sam threw his shield at the other two, just for practice, and to his surprise it hit hard on both one, then the other, making it easy for him to follow up with disabling blows. The last, a man with a shaved head and a business suit, had just enough time to reach for his gun before Hawkeye shot it from his hand, and they had control of the room.

"You almost have to feel sorry for them," Sam commented as he finished sweeping for hidden HYDRA workers, then pulled out the rope they'd brought and proceeded to tie their prisoners up. "Wasn't exactly a fair fight. Like when I was a nerd getting picked on in high school or something."

Clint snorted, inspecting the arrow stuck in the wrist of their one still-conscious prisoner. It was marked with a blue lightning symbol near the fletching. "Don't let the innocent intellectual act fool you. The difference between an evil thug and an evil genius is the thug shoots you with a gun, and the genius figures out how to launch a whole goddamn nuke. These are the same people who destroyed LA because Bruce rescued my wife. They killed millions with that strike alone."

The man whose arm Clint was holding swallowed, sweat all over his face. Between his suit and neatly manicured hands, Sam wondered if they'd just accidentally caught a HYDRA bigwig. The name on his badge read 'Darren Cross,' but he didn't recognize it. "I was just following— _AAARGH!_ "

Electricity surged from the arrow and over his body until he went limp. Clint watched, his eyes cold, then tore the arrow free and stuck it back in the quiver. "At least try to be more original with your excuses."

Sam couldn't really find it in himself to blame him, but he still tapped Clint on the shoulder. "Come on, man. We have a mission, and it isn't revenge."

As if on cue, the static on their comms faded, leaving only the faint, almost musical interference from the arc reactor, and Rescue's voice came through. "Hawkeye, Falcon, what's your status?"

"Engine room's secure," Sam said, glad to be back on track. "Attack when ready."

The sound of gunfire came through a second later, while Sam stepped up to the large array of valves and gauges that were displayed on a panel in front of him. Clint finished securing Cross, then stepped up to his side.

"Know anything about flight mechanics?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Former fighter pilot, remember?"

"Oh yeah." Clint turned to study the display in earnest, and Sam turned on the glasses, labels and readouts popping up wherever he turned his head.

Maybe he'd spoken too soon, though. Half the information was terms he'd never heard before, and the other half was thrown together in ways that made no sense. The more he looked, the more confused he got, until he had no idea how the whole thing stayed in the air, much less did it without needing to land or be refueled.

"It's like they're using a completely different energy source than we've ever seen," Clint muttered. "I can't make heads or tails of it."

Sam felt a guilty bit of relief that he wasn't the only one, but pushed it away—they needed to complete the mission, and if neither of them knew how the station worked…

He listened to the comms. He and Clint were connected directly to Bruce so that they wouldn't be distracted by the fighting, but he could still hear the basics through the Pocket's portal if he focused. From the sound of it, Rescue had secured three rooms, arc reactor interfering with the transmission every time she fired, and there was no sign of Wasp being held captive. Jemma was trying to reach archived camera footage to find out her name and what she looked like.

An idea occurred to him out of the blue, and he fiddled with the buttons on the side of his ear piece.

"You all still ok?"

"So far," Bruce said. "What do you need?"

"Got a theory I want to test. I need to cut off communications for a few seconds."

"Go ahead."

Instead of flat-out turning off his comms, though, Sam switched over to a private channel. Hawkeye noticed and did the same, his real voice echoing a split second out of sync with the mechanical one.

"What—"

"Sh." Sam closed his eyes and cupped his ear, trying to _listen._

And there it was. A barely-there line of interference on their channel, high pitched and musical. But if Rescue wasn't connected with them or close enough to cause it… it had to be coming from somewhere else.

"They're arc reactors." Sam said. "The engines. They aren't built like standard engines, they're built around Stark's arc reactor tech. That's why the work's like nothing we've seen before."

Hawkeye listened for himself, catching the sound much quicker than Sam had. He grimaced. "Shit. That changes things."

"You don't know how to break them?" Sam asked.

"Sure I do," Clint said. "Just… not without getting to them directly. Can't do it from the engine room. And with the whole place now on lockdown…"

 _We're screwed._

Sam stared at the dials again, _willing_ them to make sense. They still didn't.

"Don't worry about that," a woman said behind them. "I'm pretty good at breaking into places I shouldn't by now."

Sam jumped, and spun around. Her voice had come _from the floor_. He looked down, and the glasses zoomed in on her. A tiny figure in a red motorcycle suit—or maybe that was just the tint on his glasses—and helmet stared up at them, no more than half an inch tall. Her arms were out to perch on one bar of the metal catwalk right in front of Sam's left shoe, big as a balance beam to her. As he and Hawkeye stared at her, she pressed a button on her hands, and rapidly expanded, until she was suddenly normal size again, and way too close. She and Sam both took a hasty step back to give each other space.

The suit was poorly fitted now that Sam got a closer look at her. Badass black leather suit overlaid with red panels of body armor, but baggy at the shoulders and tight around the bust, like it had been created for a man. The way the pants dragged on the ground said the original owner had probably been a little taller than her, too. She pulled off the helmet, revealing a freckled face, bright blue eyes, and black hair in a sharp bob. She gave them both a smile, and stuck out her hand.

"I'm Hope. But I think you know me as—"

"Wasp." The name came to Sam's lips like a prayer. The person they'd fought so hard to find, the one who knew enough to fight HYDRA, and maybe give them a chance to win. "You're Wasp."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** So, while we're not anywhere close to the end of this fic, we are getting close to the end of this section. I see it finishing up as five sections total, all kind of functioning as little novellas? I'll have to see.

But the thing is, some sections are closer to finishing than others (this one and another are complete, I'm almost done with another, and the other two haven't been started yet). So after finishing up this section, there's going to be a two month (or so) hiatus, while I try to build up a bit of backlog and make sure everything's planned and foreshadowed appropriately. Hopefully no one minds too much!

As always, reviews are welcome!


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